Middle School Outreach Ensemble
(MSOE)
MSOE is a program hosted by Colorado State University to help Undergraduate Music Educators, aspiring High School Teachers, and Middle School Instrumental Students collaborate and learn together in a 9-week program. To learn more about MSOE, click this link
2020
For MSOE 2020, I was a the Sectional Teacher for the Double Basses, Conducted Dance of the Tumblers with the Orchestra, was a Mentor Teacher for a Trying on Teaching double bass student, and wrote the piece, A Thousand Single Snowflakes for the Band. Here, you can find a few lesson plans and teaching videos from this experience.
Sectional Lesson Plans and Teaching Videos
Conducting Lesson Plans and Teaching Videos
Compositional Work
A Thousand Single Snowflakes, 3:56, Grade 3
Written for the 2020 Middle School Outreach Ensemble at Colorado State University. The theme for that year was "Miscellaneous Gratitude" which I took to mean "being grateful for the little things". I love the season of winter, so for this piece I decided to be grateful for all of the single thousands of snowflakes that make up the whole of winter. This piece is available for sale here.
2021
For MSOE 2021, I was a Sectional Teacher for the Cellos and Basses, a Mentor Teacher for a Trying on Teaching cello student, and a Carnival Leader hosting a Q&A with a Composer. I also wrote three pieces for homogenous instrument trios, and one piece for found and body percussion.
Compositional Work
Fanfare for Creation
As the title may imply, this piece is meant to be a way for students to explore their creativity within music. Students have two sets of four bars in which they get to compose the melody for the piece. This can be done by each student composing their own, as a group project. It can be as simple or complex as the students and teacher so desire. This piece was a part of a collection of 1-2 minute shorts written for the 2020 Middle School Outreach Ensemble at Colorado State University in the times of “Zoom Band”. It is meant to be transferable to any instrumentation for band (in Bâ™) or strings (in D). For me, a Fanfare seemed like a great way to continue celebrating music in times where music-making is difficult.
Oh, Said the Blackbird
This piece was the third piece written for the 2021 Middle School Outreach Ensemble. It uses a few aleatoric passages to allow students to explore making creative and musical decisions. It was catered a little more towards low instruments, in order to avoid a few orchestration problems that can happen when writing for an any-instrument ensemble. However, the piece is still transferable to upper-register instruments if they would like to play it. Unlike its sister piece, Rocky Mountain High, the three variations are continuous, each focusing on a different harmonic center against the simple melody in the home key. The first, against the tonic and the subdominant, the second against the relative phrygian, and the last in the home key, using a descending scale to create the base harmony.
Rocky Mountain High
This was the second piece written for the 2021 Middle School Outreach Ensemble and uses the different lines of a folk song to create different variations. The first variation is the simplest version, bright and bold, to envision the beautiful Colorado Rocky Mountains(that are now significantly less on fire). The second variation is in the relative minor and focuses on the “Stormy Sea”. The line, “when you’re on that deep blue sea there’s no place you can hide” always strikes me as ominous, and so that is the tone I took for this variation. The last variation is about the Sunny Valley Low, and so the pentatonic scale going up and down musically paints the picture of the soft and peaceful valley.