Borromeo Quartet - Pine Meadow Project

Our fourth grade cross-curricular project stemmed from an unusual opportunity: the visit of a classical group of musicians called the Borromeo Quartet.

Our school was approached about working with the Borromeo Quartet in the winter of the 2011 - 2012 school year. Principal Greg Johnson was interested in the artistic aspects of the project and shared the information with our art specialist, Myranda Urick. Myranda took it from there, and arranged meetings and discussions between our local contact, Susan Dubin, and Nick Kitchen, director of the Borromeo Quartet. In the late fall of 2012 we jumped into the planning of the program, and actually began and completed our work with students over about a three week period in February.

Nick divided the score of Beethoven's Serioso into 33 phases. He was able to provide a recording of each phase, including a visual of the musical score for us to share with students.

Our project was to create a music video of sorts, using images created by the students. These images included movement, still digital art, other student artwork, and digital video images. The quartet would make a visit to Pine Meadow, which would be culminated by viewing the video created by the students, in conjunction with hearing the quartet play the Serioso.

In phy ed class, with phy ed teachers Gene Severson and Matt Hager, our students were split up into groups of 3-4 children, with about 7 groups in each class. As they listened to the musical work they were encouraged to come up with a creative way to move. They were given the option of adding props to their movement, so many groups chose to "dance" with hoops, ribbons, balls and other items. These "dances" were recorded on iPad Minis for later use in the music video. Here is one of those pieces of movement:

In art the fourth graders were introduced to Paint, a digital painting program on the computers. As they listened to their portion of the Serioso they were encouraged to create an image that would visualize what they were hearing. They also had a great review on moving between applications in Windows as they worked in Paint and then replayed their portion of the Serioso in Windows Media Player.

Also in art, with the support of the media/technology integrationist Laurie Conzemius, students used the iPad App Art in Motion to record a moving piece of art. These were also recorded on iPads, and all artwork and movement recordings were shared with Nick online. He began putting these images together to create our music video.

In music class, music specialists Gordon Schlichting and Carol Miller worked to teach the students more about Beethoven and his huge contribution to music. They talked more about how the music made them feel, some of the terms for the speed and volume of the music, and they shared many other works both by Beethoven and by the Borromeo Quartet. A simple search on Borromeo Quartet in Youtube will verify for you the remarkable talent and worldwide acclaim of this group.

Students meeting the members of the Borromeo Quartet and hearing them play for the first time.

Working with three members of the quartet in music class.

Working with Nick on his computer in art class.

The Borromeo Quartet spent two afternoons with all fourth graders. At this time the final creative work was done to put the video together. Students assisted with selecting the images to be used and making decisions about how and where they should be displayed. A final concert was held on Friday, March 1, and all second, third and fourth grade students in the school were invited to attend. At this concert the music video received its "world premier".  Fourth graders were so proud to see their images displayed on the screen behind the quartet.

The creativity in this project, as well as the collaboration among all of the specialists, truly made this a project to celebrate. We are excited to share it with you, and we look forward to many additional collaborations in the future!

Enjoy our video by clicking the image above!!