Just beginning at Gallery 37

Christopher Richard, COT for Teens Teaching Artist

The first couple weeks of COT for Teens have gone even better than expected! We are one of the few programs that have a full class roster in ASM.

The students we have are overall of a higher caliber than we've had before and it shows in the level of work we are able to do. We have been working on The Bell Chorus from I Pagliacci by Leoncavallo. So that they have a more immediate connection to the text, we have chosen to sing The Bell Chorus in English. They seem to like it but it's a little tricky. We need to do some more musical work on it before we can start to get it on it's feet. We've also tackled the opening chorus from Luisa Miller by Verdi. This one we decided to keep the Italian to stretch them a bit. The language hasn't been that difficult for most and it helps that everyone sings together all the time. Part of the class has been spent building the ensemble as a team doing some name games, theater games and sharing of experiences thus far in the class.

Both Marta and I are really encouraged by everyone's attitude and commit to the program to make it a most successful term!