Details:
The Headingley Gallimaufrians |
Some school work I’ve done with the organ
Interactive concerts in nurseries
Here’s a Barcelona visit:
45-minute concerts for large primary school audiences
In Spanish, Catalan and English. Here’s a sample programme, and here’s some repertoire.
Children’s stories with live music
Here’s the trailer by Pere Alberó for Sausage Man, a Catalan-language collaboration with the Barcelona writer and storyteller, Eva Muñoz, about what happens when your food is not only fast but comes in Godzilla-sized portions:
Songs for teaching English as a foreign language
Some repertoire for children and in English, including, for smaller customers, alphabet, animal, counting, and game songs, with more sophisticated materials for larger ones.
[
Saffran et al, Songs as an aid for language acquisition, Cognition 106 (2008) 975–983:
Results confirmed the hypothesis showing a strong learning
facilitation of song compared to speech. Most importantly, the present results show
that learning a new language, especially in the first learning phase wherein one needs to
segment new words, may largely benefit of the motivational and structuring properties
of music in song.
]
Some educational things involving the organ which I am simply dying to do
A barrelled history of English popular music
Nursery rhymes, carols, broadside ballads, parlour music, music hall, dance band, folk revivalism from the 14th to the 20th century, all accompanied on the street organ. Sample repertoire here, full English-language repertoire here.
Lecture-demonstration: a cultural history of the street organ
Based on the book in preparation. I’ve also got a version for children, more or less ready to go, called The Pharaoh Who Mislaid His Monkey.
Iberrations: concert of weird and wonderful Spanish songs from the last thousand years
Selected from this list, with fascinating explanations and opportunities for karaoke (with the Spanish/Catalan/whatever original and/or an English translation running on a screen). Suitable in various permutations for GCSE, A-level, and undergraduate students, as well as for connoisseurs.