MUSIC EDUCATION IN LONDON: A GLANCE FROM MOSCOW
On Saturday, 12 July 2008, Musica Nova Anglo-Russian Music Academy performed its end of year concert in the presence of the Mayor of Camden, Councillor Nurul Islam. This was the seventh concert since Musica Nova was founded and it went exceptionally well.
What was it that immediately and pleasantly attracted attention? The atmosphere of enthusiasm and full understanding between teachers, pupils and their parents. This is important as in this school education is offered to children from variety of different families. From Russian speaking families, which came to London from Russia and Ukraine, from families, whose mother tongue language is Spanish, French, Finnish, Lebanese as well as from families of native English Londoners. All these different families are united at the Musica Nova by an aspiration to give children an opportunity to submerge into the world of music, to understand and learn it in order to widen the perception of the world as a whole, to get accustomed to the good taste, to give directions for the future development.
A child, who at the age of 7 – 10 years old is performing compositions by L. Beethoven, P. Tchaikovsky, singing songs from classical jazz, will be able as a teenager to distinguish good from bad in all spheres of youth culture. This will allow the child to avoid distraction of a “one day” empty culture offered by mass media and cult.
Teachers of Musica Nova are professionals of the highest level, enormous enthusiasts of what they are doing. They could captivate children and their parents. This was evident from the preparations for the concert and rehearsals at the concert hall. Special words were found by the teacher for the pupil to calm down, stop worrying, to concentrate and to feel as a real artist. It was evident that the teachers of Musica Nova are Real Teachers! Talented, very dedicated, kind and sensitive.
Parents were not only the supporters of the event, providing beautiful costumes and preparing a wonderful after-party, but also active participants of the concert numbers! A really unique achievement of the teachers was when one of the fathers, not at all a musician by profession, sat down at the piano with his own son and started performing with him a piece arrange for four hands! We can be absolutely sure that in the future this father will become the main authority for his son, with whom the boy will share his secrets and will get an advice in a difficult moment, which will be able to lead him towards the right decision.
Of course, teachers’ performances gave us an enormous pleasure. Outstanding jazz improvisation by Yuri Verevkine (piano) and ZurabDzagnidze (guitar), vocal of EvgeniyaTerentieva – her performance of the Russian romance was very moving, performances of Julia Dovgiallo (violin) and Lilia Rogova (piano) added tothe wonderful impression of this evening. It is great that musicians of such level are doing teaching work: they can offer a lot to their students.
In the end I would like to wish Musica Nova further growth and development. I also would like to attract the attention to the wonderful opportunity of teaching children music, to accustom them to good taste, to develop their creative talents. The 21st century is not a time of boring analytics. It is a time of creative personalities, who do not count their life success on the calculator, instead they develop one’s creative process through feelings, intuition and art.
Natalia Tsvetkova
Doctor of psychology and physics
The Academic of Pedagogical and Social Studies
The Author of more than one hundred scientific articles
Two books: Open the Door to Success”
“Mirror for the Hero”
The Director of Counselling Family Centre