Musical Storytelling
Every Lullaby Begins with a New Encounter
Fenia Biniari, Communications Manager, El Sistema Greece and Project Manager, ESG Lullaby Project, and Michalis Kalkanis and Christos Kalkanis, Seeds (composer duo)
The first chapter of a Lullaby Project song is usually written in a room where strangers have just met. Professional composers sit beside a mother who has never written music before. A child wanders around the room, curious but unsure. Participants may speak through an interpreter. Others may communicate more through gestures than words. At first, there are introductions, hesitant smiles, and long pauses. There is no score, no lyrics, no expectation of what the music should become.
Young Composers in Toronto, Canada
Sistema Toronto’s students engaged in a term-long composition project with award-winning composer Aaron Manswell and the Nathaniel Dett Chorale (NDC).
Going Wild in New Brunswick
Larry Matthews, freelance writer with a long association with the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra
The 1,500-strong audience in eastern Canada’s Moncton, New Brunswick erupted with a roar of approval.
They were applauding the Sistema New Brunswick (Sistema NB) Children’s Orchestra, 110 musicians ages 9-14. But the performance of Tchaikovsky’s Marche Slave was only the warmup.
Soon, Dan Brown walked on stage. A world-famous author of bestselling novels such as The Da Vinci Code, Brown is also a composer. In 2020, he released a new work, Wild Symphony.
