衛武營國家藝術文化中心 National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts (Weiwuying)

By YANG Yu-chiao

It was my honor to be part of EDEN Engagement under the auspices of the Weiwuying Theater Arts and Education Project with the combined effort of the International Teaching Artist Collaborative and Weiwuying's Learning & Participation Department. As a teaching-artist for the project, I began in March this year by going to Kaohsiung's Renwu and Houzhuang primary schools to teach a course on choir, sound, and environmental sustainability. 

The course involved a variety of skills and knowledge from different fields, so before it started, I looked at teaching plans for the program in other cities and asked the teachers at Renwu and Houzhuang about the schools' past experiences with music and environmental issue education. Students at Renwu have for years had classes about air pollution, and those at Houzhuang had been taught about the relationship between water resources and agriculture based on information about Kaohsiung's Caogong Canal. I also observed and recorded the environments and biology kids come in contact with while on their trips to and from school each day.

During the first four weeks of the course, I first helped the kids get to know their bodies and then guided them in listening to the sounds in their surroundings, teaching them to hear the numerous sounds of plants and animals among the clamor of vehicles and factories. I had them focus on the sounds of birds chirping, leaves rustling, and other more subtle natural sounds and showed them how sounds of nature have been turned into music by composers, such as HANDEL's transformation of the scenery of a garden and 20th-century composer Aaron COPLAND's interpretation of Emily DICKINSON's poem about nature's nighttime orchestra into music. I connected that to the content for the next four weeks: discussing how soprano Joyce DiDONATO made a connection with plants and nature in selecting what to perform at the concert EDEN. I also incorporated vocalization and enunciation techniques and helped enhance students' ability to listen and concentrate—after all, being able to listen well is a foundation for choral singing.

Besides gradually bringing the students into a deeper understanding of music, I gave them a project called "The Slabs of Wind's Sound," for which they had to collect fallen leaves from campus or near their homes, stick them to recycled cardboard, and write the onomatopoeia of sounds from the nearby environment, turning the cardboard into a form of sheet music. The kids' creative capacity thoroughly surprised me, and their collective memory of the environment, plants, animals, and sound was made public as this "sheet music" was displayed at the Weiwuying Opera House.

In the final four weeks, the students spent more time practicing pitch accuracy and different vocal parts (soprano, etc.), and the four selected to perform solos honed their skills well. On the day of the concert, the students thoroughly exceeded expectations, stunning DiDONATO and causing the concert to touch me deeply. This instructional course on both singing and a social issue inspired me to rethink the possibilities for how music education can blossom within different disciplines.

*Weiwuying's Theater Arts and Education Project launched in 2020. Together with teaching artists and school teachers, we offer 13 weeks of Stage Reading and 3 weeks of Performance Appreciation course each semester. With Eden Engagement, the course of 13 weeks for the first time include choir practice in 2024.