Music, An Invitation to Express Yourself!
Music by Walter de la Mare
When music sounds, gone is the earth I know,
And all her lovely things even lovelier grow;
Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees
Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.
When music sounds, out of the water rise
Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes,
Rapt in strange dreams burns each enchanted face,
With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place.
When music sounds, all that I was I am
Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came;
And from Time's woods break into distant song
The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along.
As I am sitting in my comfy chair listening to my eclectic collection of music set to a random selection ranging from Evanescence to Bach to Norah Jones to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, I am transported on a journey of emotions that take me from the deepest anger to the peak of bliss. I listen to music because it inspires me. It helps me stir up the creative juices in my brain in order for me to formulate my thoughts into something you will want to read.
Welcome to the 2010-2011 school year and FOTO’s Bridge newsletter. My name is Renée Frank and I am pleased to join you as the President of FOTO for the upcoming year. As a child, I attempted to learn the viola and as an adult, I still pick it up and play the fun, easy fiddle songs of my youth, though I long to have the skill I hear in my own children who have the benefit of orchestra every day. The Oregon community is blessed to have such talented and dedicated orchestra teachers who have helped to inspire the next generation to not only learn to play music many hundreds of years old, they also translate modern music into orchestral compositions. Students who are involved in playing music are statistically proven to do better in math and have a greater appreciation for the fine arts community.
As a mother of two, Alexander Nasserjah, cello, sophomore at OHS, and Arianna Nasserjah, violin, 7th grader at OMS, I welcome the opportunity to reach out to members of the community and share with them the gift of music that FOTO helps to support in this school district. I’m often struck by strong emotions a particular song creates. I’ve had this happen listening to Japanese opera, Linkin Park and Vivaldi. Music is one of the healthiest ways to express our deepest human emotions. I know there is music out there that talks about “adult” topics. You know them and sometimes the music talks about death or heaven. Does this mean by listening to a particular type of music you will be drawn to a certain behavior or does it just mean you recognize that life is full of challenges and that all you really want to do is express the energy that is building up inside of you due to the world outside of you?
As a parent and former teenager, I have loved rock and roll, including the hard stuff that my parents still shake their heads at, but I also loved the classical music that came from Europe 200 years ago. As an adult, I have discovered African beats, Latin tempos and Persian poetry can also express my emotions on any given day. Our orchestra teachers here in Oregon have also discovered ways to incorporate many types of rhythms from around the world while still creating a base of musical understanding that makes me wish I could turn back the clock that will turn 40 in December and go back to being 14 so I could once again take orchestra along with the choir and art classes I enjoyed back then.
In the coming year as President of FOTO, I hope to continue to write to you about the successes of our students, staff and parents of the orchestra program and to help bring the Bridge and FOTO into 2011 with an updated look and feel that is relevant to our increasingly tech-savvy population. I look forward to hosting a blog for FOTO, highlighting events and people related to FOTO and encourage all of you to become contributing editors with stories of how music has influenced your life in some way formative.
Please watch for an email with a link to the upcoming blog and directions on how you, student, staff or parent, can contribute to the collective experience we all know as music, though heard through different ears.
Humbly yours,
Renée Frank,
President of FOTO 2010-2011
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