Hesperus Education/Residency Offerings
Singing the News: Write a Broadside Ballad
One-hour classroom workshop
1-3 HESPERUS members
Audience participation: active creation
5th grade through adult
May also be presented as a 3-hour teacher training workshop
From the 16th century through Colonial times, ‘patterers’ took a breaking news story, made a poem out of it, and set it to a common tune that everyone knew. After a short introduction to the historical context, students duplicate the process: they choose a story from their weekly reader or a local newspaper, list the salient points, agree upon a tune, create a poem to fit the tune, and then sing it together. Good for schools without a music teacher; no written music is necessary.
Create your own Film Soundtrack
3-Day Residency (1 ½ hours per day)
1-3 HESPERUS members
Audience participation: active creation
5th grade through adult
In this three-day residency, students work with the 4-minute 1921 silent film classic ‘Lobster Dreams,’ a mixture of live action and animation about a late-night snack that literally runs amok. After a discussion on the use and character of film music, student groups will 1) assemble their ‘orchestra’ made up of standard musical instruments, Orff instruments, voices, hand-made instruments (plans included) and ‘found’ instruments made from objects from their classrooms and kitchens, 2) invent music for selected moods such as discomfort, fear, and anger; and sound effects for such actions as galloping beds, howling dogs, clattering ladders and sling-shot hits, and 3) develop and perform their own soundtracks under the baton of a student conductor. Good for schools without a music teacher, no written music is necessary.
String Instruments through the Ages
One-hour lecture/demonstration
1 HESPERUS member: Tina Chancey
Audience participation: Q & A
Pre-K through adult
HESPERUS ’ Director Tina Chancey, a specialist in early bowed strings, takes the audience on a magical musical history tour to find the ancestors of our modern violin family. Using copies of authentic instruments, quoting real historical figures, and playing period music, she engages the audience’s imagination to bring the past vividly alive.
Film Programs: The Back Story
60-90 minute lecture/demonstration
4 HESPERUS members
Audience participation: Q & A
Pre-K through adult
Within the desired timeframe, HESPERUS spends a third of the session discussing silent films and their music, how the chosen film was made, and how social and political issues of the day influenced the film’s subject matter and presentation. The next third of the session features an instrument demonstration and discussion of how HESPERUS chose and set the music for the film. The last period is devoted to a 10-15 minute live demonstration of a scene from the film with HESPERUS accompaniment.
Toot-Whistle-Plunk-Boom! The History of Musical Instruments
60-90 minute lecture/demonstration
4 HESPERUS members
Audience participation: Q & A
Pre-K through adult
An in-depth exploration of the medieval and renaissance instruments we use in HESPERUS. The ancestors of our modern guitar, violin, flute and trumpet are discussed and demonstrated, using musical examples from the featured concert. Special performance techniques, improvisation and ornamentation, are touched upon. Instruments are selected from:
• Wind instruments: recorder, shawm, cornetto, pipe & tabor, sordune, krumhorn
• Plucked strings: renaissance guitar, lute, vihuela, saz
• Bowed strings: viola da gamba, vielle, fiddle, rebec, kamenj
• Percussion: dumbek, riq, finger cymbals
Community Residencies: A Weekend of Fun
If your community has an active public library or community center, you may want to partner with it to present a Saturday Renaissance, Medieval or Colonial American Festival to launch our Sunday HESPERUS performance. Local scholars and celebrities, student musicians and dancers, crafters, local restaurants, community choruses and historical re-enactors could join HESPERUS to present a low-cost, wide-reaching event that spotlights your presenting organization, and our concert.
Additional Programs
Instrument demos
Master classes
Group coaching
Lecture-demos on a particular genre or theme (i.e. Abraham Lincoln’s Music, Medieval dance).
HESPERUS 
