Here are some of our highlights.
Inspired by the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orléans, 8C showed their ability as a whole group to have everyone contribute to a performance. This took a great deal of focus and maturity and although it wasn't always easy, in the end they performed with good humour and support for each other.
Here we see Year 7 groups performing their beat-box rhythm compositions. We can see how they are showing they can combine their ideas and discuss effectively as a group to plan and perform their grooves.
There are clear signs here how creative they are as a group, and we are looking forward to seeing this develop over the year. Where could they take these talents from here?
Here, Year 9 are tackling the early stages of their Musical Futures work where they learn about being musician in an informal way. They showed how creative they can be when taking a small idea and adding in their own parts.
This showed the bringing together of a huge number of key skills such as creative thinking, team work, group discussions and musical knowledge. They demonstrated some very interesting uses of musical futures such as tempo, dynamics and texture to add interest to their compositions.
Pupils from 9M performed their own Samba compositions in groups. By layering simple patterns and using different rhythmic devices, pupils composed their own music based on Brazilian Samba. Employing techniques such as polyrhythm and call-and-response, they composed structured pieces with several different contrasting sections.
All groups that performed here took a big leap in being able to show their work live to the rest of the class. It takes a lot of guts to perform in front of your peers, and these pupils have had to work hard to build the confidence in their work to do this.
This is at the heart of what the department is about and we are all very excited to see what new work 2013 has in store!
By Mr Hutchinson
Teacher of Music
Manchester Academy