School Touring Program

Lomond Sound Traditional Music School Presentation 2023

Lomond Sound’s Traditional Music presentation consists of day-long performances and workshops, beginning with a hour-long concert for all grades. During this period each member of the group introduces themselves and demonstrates their folk art activity – singing, songwriting, dancing or instrument. The opening concert finishes with a question and answer discussion, followed by a closing set of tunes or a song. For the next two periods  students are divided into four separate groups for concurrent workshop sessions in singing, songwriting dance and playing an instrument. Depending on the musical experience of the students, we usually start with basic technique, then move on to teaching a simple tune, song or dance which they can perform together. During the first period after lunch students return to their workshop classrooms for two 30-minute sessions during which they rehearse the material covered in the morning workshops.

Lomond Sound's presentation concludes with a hour-long performance for the entire school. This concert involves students and instructors and occasionally teachers and community musicians. The final concert is an opportunity for students to demonstrate their newly acquired skills to their classmates. It’s always an exciting and rewarding time for everyone as is apparent in our school videos.

Younger students (K-3) often have difficulty holding instruments such as the fiddle and guitar so in smaller elementary schools we accommodate these students by having separate percussion, dance, singing and songwriting workshops for these grades. For larger (all-grade) schools we usually confine the workshops to grades 4-8, though students from grades can attend the opening and closing concerts. Along with their sound system, Lomond Sound brings a number of percussion instruments, violins and ukuleles to ensure that each student gets an opportunity to play. We usually limit our class size to a maximum of 25 students for instrument workshops, though singing and songwriting can involve a larger number of participants (up to 35).

At the end of each school visit we leave copies of chords sheets and song lyrics that were taught or composed during the day. We also provide an online Folk Arts Resource Guide for the schools so teachers and students can follow up their interest in traditional music and dance. Although the format described is the one we generally use for most of our school tours, we can adapt our program to meet the needs of individual schools. For example, if there is a student musical group at a school we can arrange our schedule to spend some time with them.

Lomond Sound makes an effort to teach material that is culturally relevant to the area they are visiting. Lomond Sound performs a cross section of performance styles from around province and strives to make their presentation both entertaining and educational. It has been our experience over the past ten years of touring schools that students are eager to learn more about our province’s folk arts and we believe that our school presentations have helped many young artists find their way.

Sample Daily Schedule (to be adapted to each school’s timetable):

8:50 AM – 9:50 AM – Set-up in the gym

8:50 AM – 9:50 AM – Period 1 – Opening Concert

9:50 AM – 10:05 AM – Recess

10:05 AM – 11:05 AM – Period 2 Workshops I  (4 concurrent workshops)

11:05 AM – 12:05 PM  – Period 3 Workshops II  (4 concurrent workshops)

12:05 AM – 12:55 PM – Lunch

1:00 PM – 2:00 PM – Period 4 – Rehearsals (two half-hour  sessions)

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM – Period 5 – Closing concert