First Blog Post

Hi, my name is Melissa.  I am a University of Washington (Tacoma) student who is currently completing a BA in History (Asian Studies) and a minor in education. My intention is to also get my MA in education so I can become a teacher. Eventually I am planning to get my PhD as well.  I currently am a para-educator for the Puyallup School District and love working with children and teaching them new and exciting things.  One of the classes I am currently enrolled in is Exploring Classical Music in which we are required to blog about the different experiences we have while attending local events.   This is my first blog and am happy to have the opportunity to give blogging a try.

As a girl I played the piano for approximately 5 years starting around age 8. I also sang in my school choirs from 4^th-10^th grades.  I loved to sing and I was fortunate to have a great choir director (Peggy Burroughs) while attending Aylen Jr High in Puyallup Washington where I was able to advance my musical knowledge as well as a considerable amount of self-discipline which was heavily encouraged by her.  Our Aylen choirs always won every competition we competed in and I had every intention of continuing with choir through my senior year, but the lack of discipline and lack of song difficulty the high school choir director had us singing discouraged me from continuing on that path.  Instead, I decided to put more focus on other interests, specifically ballet.

I had been taking ballet for some time by my junior year when I quit choir (as well as other dance styles; funk, jazz and tap) which exposed me to a variety of music.  The first composer I truly loved to hear music from was Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky more specifically his piece called the Nutcracker suite. Over the years I began to love other well-known classical composers such as Bach, Beethoven and Mozart.  Dancing can give you a different perspective on music because it allows you to react and move while feeling the emotions created by the music, it made me feel free.  I also love the music from the opera Die Zauberflote by Mozart and the cantana Carmina Burana by Orff.  But, I find almost all music fascinating and can easily enjoy whatever is playing around me.  I am looking forward to attending different local venues and hearing Handel’s Alcina, a symphony or two and a violin concert.

I have had a very blessed life getting to travel all over the world for 16 years, living in other countries, and being exposed to the rich cultures along the way of each place I lived or visited.  I feel that has played a considerable role in my tolerance in just about everything and greatly enhanced my interests as well.  Even though I have had musical training I don't know if I have ever had the in-depth teaching and breakdown of music in general.  This does cause me some concern, because even though I love to learn if I don’t find something interesting then…it will be hard for me to really appreciate it.  Despite this apprehension I am interested to finally truly learn about classical music.  I would like to be able to go to a concert, ballet, opera and be able to appreciate what I am hearing. I want to be able to understand what I am feeling and what the composer was trying to portray in the piece.  So often I hear music and love it but don’t understand why. [Or vice versa]  I want to be able to explain what the music is expressing to my children so they will understand as well.  I only see good coming from anything I learn from this class, and can’t wait to see how it enriches my life.