Conducting 101 is a fun, interactive and educational music experience presented at your school in a workshop format by Conductor Dina Gilbert and musicians from the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra.
This is a highly subsidized program, thanks to the support of many local community funders, and is meant to be no charge to the students attending, and very affordable for the school hosting teh session.
Note: This program is currently under review in consideration of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
The Kamloops Symphony is developing new approaches to introducing symphonic music to elementary school audiences. Through this workshop-style program, students will discover the principal instruments of the orchestra and the role of the conductor.
Ms. Dina Gilbert, the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra’s conductor, will be the spokesperson and presenter for these workshops at schools in Kamloops and area. She will be accompanied by an ensemble of seven musicians from the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra. The musical performance will be approached through the conductor's eyes. Ms. Gilbert will present her background, her aspirations as a conductor, the qualities that a conductor must possess, her relationship with the musicians and her leadership role. As Ms. Gilbert is bilingual, these workshops will be offered in both English and French.
Dina will highlight the correlations that exist between the relationships of trust and respect that conductors must establish with musicians and that teachers must establish with students. She will emphasize the importance of collaboration and cooperation, and the importance of the individual work that musicians and conductors must perform in order to achieve a high level of performance success. In a similar way, the individual work of students and teachers enables them to achieve academic success.
We offer these workshops to bring symphonic music to young people as part of a concrete and positive experience. The goal is to strengthen their knowledge and to present classical music by emphasizing that it is present in daily life. Providing young people with early exposure to symphonic music is key to developing future interest in learning to play music and in attending live performances.
At the beginning of the workshop, each musician will present his instrument, highlighting its main characteristics. The unique sound of each instrument will be demonstrated with concrete examples. The major periods of music composition will be represented by the presentation of short musical excerpts by Mozart, Beethoven, Grieg, Brahms and Dvorak.
A significant portion of the workshop will be devoted to the conductor's technique and its role, in the format of a basic 101 leadership course. This part of the workshop, very playful, will involve students. Exercises will be carried out with all the students and then with a few students selected from the audience to become "apprentice conductors" who will try directing the musicians, to the amusement of the other participants.
Conducting 101 - Students will learn the basics of conducting including: