Hello Lowell Community. If we haven't met, I'm Anthony Spano and I've taught music here at Lowell for over 16 years. I hope to be preparing these newsletters on a regular basis to update you on what we've done, are doing, and will be doing in your child's music classes. Please feel free to email me with any questions or comments:

anthony.spano@watertown.k12.ma.us

This year, we'll be featuring a different musician each month. Our musicians of the month will represent different time periods, cultures, and genres of music. Click below to see our current or previous presentations this year. This month, our musician is playwright, rapper, composer, and filmmaker Lin Manuel Miranda.

Thank you to all the families who attended our Winter Concert last Tuesday. It was the first winter concert we've had in 3 years and it was hugely successful. Our 4th and 5th grade musicians performed with artistry, pride, and confidence and we are all very proud of them. Our program remains strong and we couldn't do it without the support of our amazing community.

Students K-5 have been playing the keyboard in music class.

In our younger grades (K-2), we've learned about proper posture and hand position, high sounds vs. low sounds, steps vs. skips, chords vs. single notes, and our finger numbers. While we hope to be reading musical notation later in the year, right now we're using a simpler finger-number notation system to play familiar melodies.

In our older grades (3-5), we've spent several weeks learning to play the C-major scale using the traditional "thumb-under" technique. From there, we extended the lesson to include more difficult scales that include sharps and flats. Most recently, the 4th and 5th graders have learned about triads (3-note chords) and how they're an integral part of harmony in music. We practiced playing the chords to "Let it Be" by The Beatles.

Click on the links below to download/view the packets we use in class:

Kindergarten and Grade 1 - Black Key melodies

Grade 2 and 3 - White Key melodies

Grades 3-5 - Scales and Triads

Our instrument program has been very successful thus far this year. We have excellent participation from many of our 4th and 5th grade students and we're hoping to have some creative performance opportunities later in the school year. If you have any questions regarding your child's instrument lessons, feel free to email their instrument teacher at any time:

Macullen Byham (strings)

Michael Frontz (strings)

Maxwell Thew (winds, percussion)

Anthony Spano (winds, percussion)

Singing is central to our music curriculum at all age levels. As I tell the students, your voice is the "oldest instrument in the world" and we carry it around with us everywhere we go. Below are recordings of just a few of the songs we've been singing in class over the past few weeks:

Over in the Meadow - traditional

La Bamba - Ritchie Valens

I Had a Little Rooster - traditional

Skin and Bones - traditional

Boris the Spider - The Who

Blackbird - The Beatles

Yellow Submarine - The Beatles