Haley Boyer

Self-Reflection

Musicianship Project

In this project, my classmates and I were given 30 minutes to do three things:

perform a cover of a song or piece, reinterpret that piece into a new style, and to

compose a small piece of our own original composition. My group consisted of several

of my friends, Kim on voice, Julian on alto sax, Kristen on voice, Sean on piano, and

myself on flugelhorn, in which I utilized a trombone harmon mute. This group of music

students decided to perform a piece of the classical repertoire: Firework by Katie Perry.

We played it in its original form, and reinterpreted it into a jazz type ballad which

included harmon mute. For our original composition we created “Battle of the Posters,”

in which Kristen and Kim both narrated a poster found within the conservatory as the

instrumentalists improvised chords and reacted to the voices as they did new and

interesting things. Overall I’d consider this to be a successful project. Not only did we

complete the necessary requirements for this project, but it was done with a relative

amount of harmony, skill, adaptability, and an absolute mountain of fun. There were

some funky notes, and funky rhythms, but that’s not at all what this was about. This was

about practicing something that would be easy to implement into any instrumental

classroom, to expand the listening and improvisation skills of ourselves and our future

students, to form communities, to remind ourselves and our future students that music

is for everyone, and music can be made with anything. It was a playful, wonderful

experience, and for that alone it was successful.