Jack Gets an Audience

The kids' school doesn't have a formal band program, but they do have a great variety of instruments, including keyboards! Hank is learning to play violin, keyboard, and he's learning to sing. Part of his keyboarding lessons is playing a 12 bar blues progression with walking bass. Too freakin' cool. For their end-of-term program, his class sang a Christmas song from the Netherlands, "Sancta Lucia." On a side note, Hank has also done two music projects using PowerPoint, one over Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf, and another over Bob Marley.

The day after Hannah's program, we went back for some Jack the Entertainer.  They are learning to read music in year 6 (American 5th grade). In this first performance, they play a variety of percussion instruments.





And in this next one, the kids read rhythmic patterns off of randomly ordered flash cards. The teacher held up a card, and the kids performed whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, whole rests, half rests, and quarter rests using different body movements and vocals.  This level of musical competence is pretty cool for this age.