One exercise involved children listening to music, then trying to draw what they thought it looked like.
With the leadership of Grammy-nominated musician Nick Revel, 100 students worked in small classes to advance their stringed instrument playing skills, improvisation and notation knowledge at a Marywood University-led workshop in conjunction with the Marywood String Project. With the project scheduled to wrap up within the coming days, all involved will present the fruits of their hard work in a May concert.
Revel, a viola player nominated for multiple Grammy Awards with his musical outfit PUBLIQuartet, touts credentials including appearances on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Library of Congress. He described the semester-long project as a “youth orchestra,” explaining that four groups of “mostly middle school-aged children or younger” took part, with some Marywood music students sitting in to help and coach.
“They’re all really sweet and they’re really good natured,” Revel said of the young musical learners. “Sometimes you do these visits and nobody cares, but they’re really into it.”
Grammy-nominated violist Nick Revel taught a group of 100 students at Marywood University as part of their String Project led by the project director and Associate Professor of Violin at Marywood, Sophie Till. In culmination, the students will perform a free, public concert on Monday, May 5. (Nick Revel / Submitted)
A student-created illustration and visual representation of how they think music looks, inspired by a lesson in a semester-long project taught by Grammy-nominated violist Nick Revel in conjunction with Marywood University and the Marywood String Project. (Nick Revel / Submitted)
In conjunction with Marywood University’s String Project, a group of 100 elementary and middle school students from the Scranton area spent a semester learning with Grammy-nominated musician Nick Revel on the themes of musical notation and developing their own notation, such as with the icons seen here, and also incorporating improvisation and song composition. In culmination, the students will perform a free, public concert on Monday, May 5. (Nick Revel / Submitted)
Revel explained that some of the classwork involved drawing music in real time.
“I perform something for them, they’re given colored pencils and papers, and they’ll get prompts,” Revel explained, adding students are asked, “How would you convert that into a visual representation?” Students then drew what they heard.
“Some of these drawings are beautiful, they’re brilliant,” Revel said of the musicians’ illustrations, adding he hopes to make a digital scrapbook of the drawings to distribute.
One group of students was “particularly enthusiastic,” Revel said, pointing to his Thursday class. “Those are elementary and middle school kids,” Revel said. “They’re really bright-eyed and full of good ideas.”
Revel said various classes, mostly consisting of children who live in and around Scranton, met in the afternoons Monday though Thursday for no less than an hour and a half. He explained that students used a voting process to decide how the group project would progress, and used exercises, lessons and activities throughout the project, including learning about the history of notation and performing rhythm trains — which Revel described as a “small musical idea that you can loop over and over again in the same tempo as the person who started.”
“By the time we get to the last person, everybody is playing a little loop in tempo with each other, and it makes kind of a jam,” Revel said.
The class developed their own sort of musical notation system with Revel’s guidance. The rhythm train symbol is “a big fat X,” Revel said, adding the notation the class developed together will be displayed on a big-screen projector as part of their upcoming concert.
Grammy-nominated violist Nick Revel taught a group of 100 students at Marywood University as part of their String Project led by the project director and Associate Professor of Violin at Marywood, Sophie Till. In culmination, the students will perform a free, public concert on Monday, May 5. (Nick Revel / Submitted)
In conjunction with Marywood University’s String Project, a group of 100 elementary and middle school students from the Scranton area spent a semester learning with Grammy-nominated musician Nick Revel on the themes of musical notation and developing their own notation, such as with the icons seen here, and also incorporating improvisation and song composition. In culmination, the students will perform a free, public concert on Monday, May 5. (Nick Revel / Submitted)
A student-created illustration and visual representation of how they think music looks, inspired by a lesson in a semester-long project taught by Grammy-nominated violist Nick Revel in conjunction with Marywood University and the Marywood String Project. (Nick Revel / Submitted)
Sophie Till, the director of the Marywood String Project and an associate professor of violin at Marywood, said the project’s dual mission is to “provide affordable string education to children while also providing a mentored teacher-training experience for university music students.” The project is part of a national organization, the National String Project Consortium.
“We have children ages 4 to 18 learning string instruments in group lessons and orchestra,” Till said, describing the project as “amazing.”
Till further explained the process that Revel and the children were tasked with.
“They have been exploring and creating their own music notation and improvisation,” she said, adding the project will culminate in the form of music.
“This will come together with all 100 children on stage at once, performing the piece they have created with Nick, in the Marywood auditorium,” Till said.
Diogo Salmeron Carvalho, Ph.D., an assistant professor of music at Marywood, said the school is “lucky to have Sophie Till and the String Project.”
He also praised Revel.
“Nick Revel is a brilliant musician and educator,” Carvalho said. “He manages to combine a high level of artistry with intense community engagement. It is absolutely fantastic to see children super excited for, and succeeding at, performing very complex music.”
A dress rehearsal will take place Sunday, with the main event occurring Monday at 6:30 p.m. The concert is free and open to the public.