Children's Concerts
Deb, Jodi and I have been asked to a children's concert at the Ohio Valley Filk Festival this year and we were happy to say "yes". We'll be doing the concert together with Guest of Honour Ookla The Mok, which is cool, because it's been quite awhile since UT and Ookla have done a concert together.
When we first formed UT in 1993 we never anticipated becoming performers of children's music. Of the three of us, I was the only one who had a natural background in singing children's songs through my teaching. We fell into our first children's concert quite accidentally. We were attending Confusion in Michigan in January of 1994, and being that we were a new group, we were eager to perform.
zencuppa was running the filk programming and, knowing I was a teacher, she approached me about singing a few songs in a children's concert with the filk group BCsquared. I asked if my partners, Debbie and Jodi, could perform with me, and she said "Sure".
Now, at this point Urban Tapestry had -never- given a concert in public before. We'd been together for about six months and we'd done some recording, but we hadn't been to any conventions in that time period. The opportunity to perform at Confusion was appealing. Thing is, though, we had no experience singing children's songs as a group and no children's song repertoire at all. So we blitzed several practices where we gathered a list of children's songs I knew from teaching, summer camp work, childhood in general. We added some action songs and some audience participation songs. Debbie drew some cartoons to accompany "The Lollipop Tree". The concert proved to be a lot of fun and we felt energized singing with the kids (and the adult "kids at heart").
We hadn't expected that our first concert ever would be for children, but we were surprised at the number of lessons we were able to take from performing for children and translate them to our adult concerts. Turns out adult audiences enjoyed Debbie's cartoons, too :). Sing-a-longs and audience participation songs always go over well with filkers. Some of the songs we prepared for children's concerts ended up going over as well or better in adult concerts ("Interjections", "Yakko's Universe", "The Hockey Monkey Song").
We have volunteered to do children's concerts at most conventions we've been involved in since. Our "children's" audiences have ranged from a handful of sleepy children to a packed convention hall of energetic British filkers and everything in-between. We've prepared quite a broad repertoire of kiddie songs, as we never know what age or attention span of listeners we may get. We've done many children's concerts with other filkers, too, which is great for picking up new material :). We've had a chance to perform a series of children's concerts in four libraries of the Toronto Public Library System, which was pretty cool, as well. They gave us Jean Luc Picard reading posters (yay!), as well as a small fee in payment, the first time UT had been paid for performing.
It's become a true advantage to Urban Tapestry to have this additional side of us that we can offer to conventions and other venues. Children's concerts have a goofiness and unpredictability quite unique from the adult concerts that we do. We'll look forward to adding to our kiddie concert memories at OVFF!
SURVEY:
This could be fun. Tell me one song you learned as a child that you vividly remember. Who taught it to you? Where did you learn it? Feel free to grace us with a verse or two.
When we first formed UT in 1993 we never anticipated becoming performers of children's music. Of the three of us, I was the only one who had a natural background in singing children's songs through my teaching. We fell into our first children's concert quite accidentally. We were attending Confusion in Michigan in January of 1994, and being that we were a new group, we were eager to perform.
zencuppa was running the filk programming and, knowing I was a teacher, she approached me about singing a few songs in a children's concert with the filk group BCsquared. I asked if my partners, Debbie and Jodi, could perform with me, and she said "Sure".Now, at this point Urban Tapestry had -never- given a concert in public before. We'd been together for about six months and we'd done some recording, but we hadn't been to any conventions in that time period. The opportunity to perform at Confusion was appealing. Thing is, though, we had no experience singing children's songs as a group and no children's song repertoire at all. So we blitzed several practices where we gathered a list of children's songs I knew from teaching, summer camp work, childhood in general. We added some action songs and some audience participation songs. Debbie drew some cartoons to accompany "The Lollipop Tree". The concert proved to be a lot of fun and we felt energized singing with the kids (and the adult "kids at heart").
We hadn't expected that our first concert ever would be for children, but we were surprised at the number of lessons we were able to take from performing for children and translate them to our adult concerts. Turns out adult audiences enjoyed Debbie's cartoons, too :). Sing-a-longs and audience participation songs always go over well with filkers. Some of the songs we prepared for children's concerts ended up going over as well or better in adult concerts ("Interjections", "Yakko's Universe", "The Hockey Monkey Song").
We have volunteered to do children's concerts at most conventions we've been involved in since. Our "children's" audiences have ranged from a handful of sleepy children to a packed convention hall of energetic British filkers and everything in-between. We've prepared quite a broad repertoire of kiddie songs, as we never know what age or attention span of listeners we may get. We've done many children's concerts with other filkers, too, which is great for picking up new material :). We've had a chance to perform a series of children's concerts in four libraries of the Toronto Public Library System, which was pretty cool, as well. They gave us Jean Luc Picard reading posters (yay!), as well as a small fee in payment, the first time UT had been paid for performing.
It's become a true advantage to Urban Tapestry to have this additional side of us that we can offer to conventions and other venues. Children's concerts have a goofiness and unpredictability quite unique from the adult concerts that we do. We'll look forward to adding to our kiddie concert memories at OVFF!
SURVEY:
This could be fun. Tell me one song you learned as a child that you vividly remember. Who taught it to you? Where did you learn it? Feel free to grace us with a verse or two.