Rachel Buchman Narrates Children’s “Music Party” of Poetry, Art & Music

Brigid Ehrmantraut and Rachel Buchman discuss the upcoming Children's Concert

By Brigid Ehrmantraut

“Everyone can make music.”

That’s the conviction guest artist Rachel Buchman brings to the Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival (OICMF) this year. Nothing illustrates this better than the annual Children’s Concert.

This year’s Children’s Concert will feature the Gryphon Trio (Annalee Patipatanakoon–violin, Roman Borys–cello, and Jamie Parker–piano), vocalist Philip Cutlip,  pianist, Jon Kimura Parker, and narrator Rachel Buchman. The concert is to be held at Orcas Center on Monday, August 15, at 1  p.m. Admission is free.

The program contains excerpts from other Festival works, including Dichterliebe (The Poet’s Love) which will feature baritone Phillip Cutlip.  Rachel Buchman will join the Gryphon Trio as the narrator for a piece by Dan Sedgwick,  Bird Moon Raccoon involving texts from various children’s books. Buchman states that while “the stories are very poetic and the music is very sophisticated…. we [OICMF] want to make the works we’re presenting child friendly.”

New to the Children’s Concert is a projection system which will allow illustrations by  artists of children’s classics such as Garth Williams, Remy Charlip and Clement Hurd to grace the screen behind performers. Ms. Buchman says that the visual elements and narration fit with the unofficial theme of poetry and text pervading this year’s Festival.

Buchman founded and leads the Young Children’s Division at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, an oversees JUMP, an outreach performance program. She has performed international and has released seven award-winning albums. She has performed in original pieces composed for her, such as The Giving Tree and Just So Stories.

This is the second year Rachel Buchman has been part of The Chamber Music Festival. This time however, she has been able to work more in depth with island preschools, such as Children’s House, Kaleidoscope, Montessori, and Salmonberry.  In fact, she even plans to incorporate some of the kids she has worked with into the concert. “That’s so incredibly exciting!” she says.

Buchman described an exercise using a xylophone she conducted with the preschoolers. The children were asked to identify different patterns of notes: glissandos, scales, and intervals, which she first described to them as slides, steps and jumps. When asked to differentiate between patterns without looking at her, “They nailed it,” Buchman proudly announced. She has also been using drums and percussion to teach rhythm to the children.

Buchman will be leading a Tune-Up session the Tuesday following the Children’s Concert for young musicians of all instruments, aided by Elementary, Middle, and High School Strings teacher Pamela Wright.

Ms. Buchman sings, plays guitar and piano, and has studied eurythmics extensively. Invented by the Swiss composer, Emile-Jacque Dalcroze, the mission of eurythmics is to incorporate emotion and feeling into music from a young age. Eurythmics was started to eliminate the point where musicians who otherwise have great technical skill “disconnect emotionally and spiritually from music.”

Buchman explains that the two most important things for kids are singing and moving and that eurythmics “capitalizes on the musical instinct of children.” When used as a teaching method, eurythmics involves familiarizing children with the sounds of music before having them learn the specifics of playing an instrument and the symbols used in reading music.  Singing and dancing prepare children for playing instruments and a lifelong appreciation of music because they participate in a physical way and improvisation is natural, Bachman says.

“Then teaching how to read notes is nothing — a quarter note looks like a walking foot, an eight note like running feet…. music goes beyond that but song and dance gives us the way to develop the ability to respond.”

Buchman “is very grateful for the support and confidence of the OICMF and their sponsors… to see the enjoyment the kids get  in our sessions and the teachers feeling they are empowered, that there is so much they can do.  The thing that powers my motor is that everyone can make music.

“Our society gives too much power to specialists and experts. When we’re little, it’s like a human attribute to be able to sing and keep a beat — to make music.”

Her point was driven home by  an Orcas preschooler who described a concert as a “music party.”

The Gryphon Trio has also done much in the world of music outreach and have collaborated with Rachel on the Children’s Concert. John Kimura Parker will perform at the piano for the Beethoven “Ghost Trio.”

The Festival is proud to have baritone Philip Cutlip performing at the Children’s Concert as well.   Cutlip says, “My mother played piano… my father played trombone and had a great love of jazz, and all of us at one time or another sang in our church choir. All the church choirs were led by a very demanding conductor named Barbara Brummett, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that without her I might not be a professional musician today. ” (From the 2011 OICMF program)

OICMF Artistic Director and Founder, Aloysia Friedmann adds, “Voice is the most natural instrument; it’s the first instrument we all hear, and everybody sings. This will be an opportunity for the children to hear it developed, to hear what a big voice  can do.”

But the involvement of children in the Chamber Music Festival and the Chamber Music Festival in music education does not end with the summer concerts.  The Festival, through its program “In Music” (IM),  has  sent their Musicians-in-Residence into the schools during the school-year, held Master Classes  and Tune-Up Sessions with the  focus on young musicians;   as well as recently sponsoring new instruments for the Orcas Island Elementary, Middle, and High School music programs. This year, in addition to Buchman’s work with preschoolers as Musician-in-Residence, IM’s newest music education creation is “Pied Pipers.” Children are introduced to community musicians who, one at a time, visit each preschool to bring the joy of making music to children.

Buchman comes to the OICMF as Teaching Artist through the sponsorship of Win Rhoades; her presence at the Tune-Up Session is sponsored by Phyllis and Bob Henigson, who are also the sponsors of the Children’s Concert.  The reception following the concert comes courtesy of the Music Advocacy Group (MAG), who for five years have provided Young Musician’s Awards to the following high school seniors:

2007     Miel Bredouw, Gregory Griffith and Matt Wachter
2008     Anthony Ghazel, Cara Peacock
2009     Joseph Boucher, Brittany Wachter
2010     Stephen Baker
2011     Kailley Grantham, Cameron Smart

Aloysia Friedmann says, “What MAG has done is absolutely incredible. They’ve brought to Orcas Island an awareness of how important music is. The music programs in the schools and preschoools has been sustained, enhanced and elevated in a very rich way by their hard work. ”

The Gryphon Trio’s appearance is through sponsorship by Lauren Schuler-Donner and the National Endowment for the Arts. Philip Cutlip’s participation in the 2011 OICMF  is sponsored by the Louisa Lundgren Legacy Artist Fund.

For further information about this year’s Chamber Music Festival, go to www.oicmf.org