Giving Voice to Children's Artistry A Guide for Music Teachers and Choral Conductors

This book presents a comprehensive view of children's musical artistry and how to develop it in both the music classroom and children's chorus. Presenting the musical mind as the gateway to children's artistry, and addressing the power of movement in its embodiment and advancement, author Mary Ellen Pinzino shows how song—rhythm, melody, and text, independently and together—influence children's developing artistry musically, expressively, and vocally at every level. Accordingly, she also offers a multitude of specific songs that inspire children's artistry, all in various tonalities and meters and on a continuum of increasing difficulty. Keeping the need for practical application in mind, Pinzino offers materials for implementation with children from kindergarten through seventh grade, as well as guidance for professional development. Content can be applied alongside any pedagogical methodology, as well as with older singers in the process of developing their own artistry. In short, this book makes the intangibles of children's artistry more tangible. It enables music teachers and choral conductors to draw artistry out of every child and draw every child into the choral art. It summons music teachers and choral conductors to bring artistry to the forefront of every music class and choral rehearsal—and to the forefront of the field of music education as a whole.

Mary Ellen Pinzino is the Founder/Director of the Come Children Sing Institute, a center for research and development in music learning, and she directs the Institute's Online Teacher Education Center for professional development. She is the composer of the Come Children Sing Institute SONG LIBRARY, a full resource of songs for early childhood, elementary school, and children's chorus. She has done extensive classroom research on music learning and on song in the development of children's artistry. She is the author of the e-book Letters on Music Learning, a compilation of six years of publications for music teachers from the Come Children Sing Institute, and has done comprehensive writing on the process of music learning for the online courses and for various music educator organizations' publications. Mary Ellen has taught all ages from birth through graduate students, including many years of conducting children's choruses and teaching early childhood music, several years as conductor of high school and college choruses, and many years teaching teachers. She has presented nationally and internationally for music educators' organizations, including the American Choral Directors Association, the National Association for Music Education, the International Society for Music Education, the American Orff-Schulwerk Association, the Organization of American Kodaly Educators, Suzuki Institutes, the Gordon Institute for Music Learning, and music teacher conferences in Portugal, Indonesia, and Lithuania. She received Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, and studied extensively with Edwin Gordon.