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Roughly 160 elementary students from across the Big Horn Basin sang, played the recorder and participated in a variety of movement-based performances during the Big Horn Basin Elementary Music …
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Roughly 160 elementary students from across the Big Horn Basin sang, played the recorder and participated in a variety of movement-based performances during the Big Horn Basin Elementary Music Festival at Powell High School on April 1.
The festival rotates through schools in the basin, so this is the first time that Powell has hosted the festival in nine years.
“I think [the festival] is so valuable in so many ways. I think it gives kids an opportunity to work together with other kids and other adults that they normally would not have gotten a chance to,” said Michael Jaycox, Parkside Elementary School music teacher.
He added that students have to work on cooperation and learning and performing new concepts on the same day. Those who performed movements at the festival had no idea what they would be performing and no prior preparation.
For the choir performance, students and music teachers alike go from working with a choir of 20 students to a choir of roughly 100, which is an uncommon experience, Jaycox said.
Kati Sears, the Southside Elementary School music teacher, said the Big Horn Basin is the only collection of districts in the state that give this type of opportunity to its elementary students.
Students are selected by their music teachers from Burlington, Cody, Greybull, Lovell, Meeteetse, Rocky Mountain and Powell to participate in the half-day-long festival where they learn to perform together ahead of the concert that afternoon. Jaycox helped with the movement performances and said that unlike the recorder and choir students who had their music ahead of time, movement students learned their routines the day of. These students had to learn how to do maypole dances, dances involving parachutes (large circular pieces of fabric that groups of students coordinated to move to a beat) and blacklight dances.
Jaycox said that all of the students were laughing and smiling, which was his cue that the day was a success, “and anytime you use a parachute life is great,” he joked.
Sears said she appreciates the teachers being willing to bring their students to collaborate with other Big Horn Basin students, she’s also grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with other music teachers in the area, which is not always a possibility.
