ELIZABETH PLEMMONS
Connecting Experience to Course Learning
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Connect and extend course learning to engagement in the community.
In the summer of 2018, I spent a week in Lübeck, Germany learning about chamber ensemble singing from a group of international experts in the field, The King’s Singers. This week-long master class was part of the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, and 8 members of our chamber ensemble Coriolis went to learn how to take our ensemble to the next level of performance (building what we had already learned from a previous master class with the KS the summer before). We spent several hours a day just singing and learning, and we spent our later afternoons and evenings wandering around Lübeck getting to know the people, their culture, and their history.
This was one of the foremost experiences of my life. I was able to brine in my art, which was an incredible luxury. I learned about the history of the city and how it related to great composers like Bach and Buxtehüde. I met some wonderful German people, and brushed the cobwebs off of my German-speaking skills. Had I the choice, I would have flown my husband and daughter out and stayed there all summer long.
When I got back to the states and started in on my classes in the fall, there was a shimmer of newness surrounding what I was learning. Conducting classes and choral methods classes were different experiences than they had been before that summer masterclass. I learned to take what I was learning in those classes and meld them with this newly-acquired, shimmery knowledge, creating educational ideas and opportunities that I know I never would have be able to do before this experience. My action research project on the effects of the “Golden Moment” breathing technique on the musicality and cohesion of high school choral ensemble performance was a direct result of what I learned in Germany.
Because of this experience, I have a wonderful foundation of knowledge and experience that has supplemented what I’ve learned in my choral methods classes, and I’m looking forward to sharing the fruits of this experience with my future students and ensembles.
