The original version of this post was written in 2013 by Anne Pearce, a Research Fellow and MWS parent of an All-State Festival participant. It is updated here by Beth Riungu, in February 2018, following a teachers' presentation to the Meadowbrook Parents Association.
Early on a cold Saturday morning in November, several violin students warmed up for their audition for the 2012-13 All-State Festival, Orchestra. The students looked nervous as they practiced their scales, reviewed their music and waited to be called into the audition room. Jeremy Fortier, the Strings teacher at Meadowbrook Waldorf School, explained that the students had prepared for the audition for months, in school and with a private instructor, learning scales, developing sight-reading skills, and mastering a movement or two from the staples of classical music.
The Rhode Island Music Educators Association sponsors the annual All-State Festival. RIMEA is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the musical development of all Rhode Islanders, especially through music education and performance in schools and communities. The festival is open to music students in grades 7-12, who are sponsored by their music teachers, in Orchestra, Chorus, and Band. This year 1,594 music students from across Rhode Island auditioned and approximately 600 were selected.“All-State is music-making at a very high level and an opportunity to participate in a full symphonic orchestra, with woodwinds, brass and percussion; the experience is impressive and unbeatable,” Fortier said.
Jeremy Fortier conducts Yuletide Revels in the URI auditorium.
What is also impressive is the large number of MWS students who audition and are selected for the All-State Orchestra, especially given the school's size relative to the other participating schools which have much larger student populations. In this year’s strings division, for example, MWS was represented by seven players in the Junior Orchestra and four players in the Senior Orchestra. The next best school representation, for a school five times larger, had four and two strings students selected for the Junior and Senior Orchestras respectively. The MWS choral program was also well represented at this year's Festival with four current, and several alumni, singers.
The reasons MWS students achieve such success are found not only in their talented teachers, but in the school's overall approach to music education. Music is an integral part of every day life at MWS, beginning with the youngest children in Early Childhood. Every student from first grade through eighth plays an instrument, and from their teachers the students gain not only musical skills and knowledge but a chance to experience the finer aspects of music-making. All students learn to play in ensembles, and perform in the school’s annual Yuletide, and Spring Revels, as well as Chorus, Recorder, and Strings concerts. For some students this experience leads to the opportunity to participate in the All-State Festival, rehearsing with a professional concert conductor for the public performance held each March at the Veteran's Memorial Auditorium in Providence.
In Waldorf Education music studies, students are taught to master more than melody, harmony and rhythm. Waldorf students develop listening skills that help them hear more than what meets the ear. They learn how to work within a group of peers with differing abilities to produce something beautiful. As graduates, they may not continue to study music but they go out into the world with the confidence and competence that comes from having refined a skill through effort and perseverance. The Waldorf music curriculum helps produce fine musicians, but its true aim is to help produce fine human beings.
Impressive indeed.
JEREMY FORTIER has been teaching Grade 6, 7 and 8 Strings at Meadowbrook Waldorf School in Richmond, RI since 2005. He is also a private teacher for many MWS students and alumni. He has played the viola for more than 30 years and participated in several All-State Festivals in his original home state of Georgia.
All photographs by SETH JACOBSON PHOTOGRAPHY