ABA & GLP | Innovation Field Notes
In the early days of COVID, the confinement caused by lockdown transformed homes into offices, schools, gyms, movie theaters, restaurants, and much more. With our lives operating from a single location, we lost choice and agency around the state of our surroundings – both physical and auditory. Simple sounds we might have never noticed became repetitive – an audible reminder of lockdown. During the 2020-2021 school year, I worked alongside the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra’s Creative Partner, composer and pianist Courtney Bryan, to explore the following questions: How can this state of restraint be a catalyst for student expression? How can a lack of choice be turned into freedom?
Under the umbrella of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra’s education program, Music for Life, Courtney and I facilitated composition workshops with four young New Orleans musicians over the span of two months. During these workshops, students used the common sounds they heard in quarantined New Orleans – dogs barking, motorcycles, rain storms, boiling water – as musical inspiration.
Students collected sounds from their locked down surroundings like explorers of a new world, listening to them in new ways as they turned each sound into a musical expression. Cellos moaned the deep sounds of a tugboat and dripping faucets came to life on the high E string of a violin. One student chose to depict the eye of the storm during one of New Orleans’ summer hurricanes. As instruments began to embody the collected sounds, a story started to form of these students’ shared experience of lockdown. The final version of this story is now a composition called “A Day in the Life Of,” which was recorded at the historic Orpheum Theater in New Orleans. The performance now acts as a lasting symbol of the student’s ability to flip their perspective and reclaim their surroundings.
The project doesn’t end there. For the 2021-2022 season, Coutney and I will be working with high school students around ideas of resiliency and remembrance in partnership with Carnegie Hall’s LInkUP program Reflections on Resilience , exploring how composition can continue to create space for the student voice and experience.
Authored by Rebecca Crenshaw (GLP 2021 | United States)
Rebecca Crenshaw is a teaching artist and musician, and works as the Education and Engagement Manager of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. Music for Life is made possible by the Gia Maione Prima Foundation, Carnegie Weill Institute of Music, D’Addario Foundation, Classic for Kids Foundation, and Hancock Whitney.
