Music contributes to a persons development, it favours creativity and amplifies knowledge. The orchestra, as a collective experience, increases the motivation of students, it promotes integration and socialization and enables the achievement of great results through minor efforts.
For these reasons, the La Nuova Musica Foundation created a system of orchestras, conceived of to be a part of extracurricular afternoon activities in public schools, based on the Abreu model in Venezuela that involved over 350.000 children.
In over ten years of activity we have developed a methodology and didactical approach that is adapted to the Italian cultural models, that of our schools and our way of teaching and making music with young children. The instrumental technique is taught through orchestral parts. Each child can study his part with his own music teacher and often with older children, not through traditional methods. "...Students that learn within the Orchestra obtain the same results as students who attend Conservatory...only in less time." (J.Abreu).
Since 2004, we have formed a number of orchestras out of the 30 U13O nurseries in public schools throughout Lombardia, Piemonte, Liguria and Emilia Romagna, for a total of approximately 2000 children.
"The working method within the orchestra is founded on a concept of collectivism, that favours orchestral practice right from the beginning. The method’s secret lies precisely in the total abolition of individual teaching during the first two years of study, favouring collective instrumental lessons combined with immediate orchestral practice instead. The results obtained through this method and the fast paced learning that comes with it are astonishing if confronted to traditional instrumental lessons taken with the presence of the teacher only."
Alessandra Masiello, Pedagogical Manager, Under 13 Orchestra
For a student, choosing to join an U13O nursery means having the possibility to study instruments such as the violin, cello, flute, clarinet and percussions within their school, after regular hours, with specific benefits to the costs for the family, including in the rent of their instrument. It especially means, however, being part of a great Orchestra!
In addition, the ABC Orchestra project is available for all school classes in the morning, which has allowed, for the last 13 years, to bring instrumental practice within schools through a methodology founded on the model of a great foreign youth orchestra.
This project allows children to discover music within their own school environment and during regular hours, helping them to find hidden potential within the musical code and to discover the evocative power that stands before the rule, through the use of verbalization to acquire the gesture of musical execution, and as a first approach to musical notation.
THE TEACHING PATH.
PHASE 1: DO, RE, MI...CHILDREN'S CHOIR AND ORCHESTRA
(this project is dedicated to pre school classes and year one and two classes)
The objective is to use music instruments, singing and movement to tell stories, learning to know music as a written language and discover that sounds can be drawn.
PHASE 2: ABC ORCHESTRA...CLASS CHOIR AND ORCHESTRA
(this project is dedicated to years three and four)
An introductory path to music, as well as to instrumental and choral practices, through the transformation of a story into musical notation, which guides children to the discovery of musical code, even in its more complex forms of writing. A fun approach, whose objective is to form a class orchestra accompanied by vocal melodies.
PHASE 3: ABC ORCHESTRA...SCHOOL ORCHESTRA
(this project is dedicated to year 5 classes)
Consolidate the relationship with the instrument and form a proper 'school orchestra' by uniting different classes. All classes, like in a real orchestra, will study the same pieces and will rehearse as unified sections with a conductor.