New School Ensembles Restarting
Waltons New School of Music
We are pleased to announce that after a year and a half away, five of our ensembles will re-start in January. With the health and safety of all participants our top priority, the number of participants in each ensemble is strictly limited, and safety protocols will be observed. But none of these will take away from the joy of collective music-making!
Students concurrently enrolled for other tuition with the New School receive 20% discounts off the fees for school ensembles.
The following ensembles will run in our Second Term:
Adult String Ensemble
Jazz Ensemble II
Jazz Ensemble III
Sing & Swing Jazz Vocal Ensemble
Sing Your Heart Out Choir
Adult String Ensemble
Tuesdays 7.45 – 8.45 pm
Limited to 6 participants
Our Adult String Ensemble provides an excellent opportunity for adult musicians of all backgrounds to come together to learn and play. This fun and relaxed ensemble introduces basic and intermediate techniques of ensemble playing and blending with others, while exploring a wide range of music together in an informal and non-competitive atmosphere. A gentle approach, encouraging guidance and ‘safety in numbers’ enable Ensemble members to achieve heights beyond their expectations. But more importantly, they experience the thrill of creating music together as a group!
The Adult String Ensemble is open to adult violin, viola, cello and double bass students who have studied a string instrument for one year or longer and can read music. It is currently limited to six participants.
Jazz Ensemble II
Wednesdays 6.30 – 7.30 pm
Limited to 6 participants
Our Jazz Ensemble II is an intermediate ensemble designed for students with some previous jazz experience (Jazz Ensemble I or similar). Ensemble participants are introduced to a range of essential skills, including:
- How to approach a melody, distinguish its main notes from its less important ones and improvise on those.
- How to move from one chord to the next by building up harmonic vocabulary.
- Learning about different jazz genres and approaches (jazz blues, Latin jazz, modal jazz).
And they develop these skills by exploring a range of great standards from the jazz repertoire. Here are a few that the ensemble has worked on:
- ‘Alone Together’ – Arthur Schwartz
- ‘Autumn Leaves’ – Joseph Kosma
- ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ – Henry Mancini
- ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ – Antônio Carlos Jobim
- ‘Solar’ – Miles Davis
- ‘Song for My Father’ – Horace Silver
- ‘Strasbourg St. Dennis’ – Roy Hargrove
- ‘Tune Up’ – Eddie Vinson
This ensemble is currently limited to six participants, with a limit of one acoustic or electric bass player, one drummer, one pianist and one wind instrument player.
Jazz Ensemble III
Wednesdays 7.45 – 8.45 pm
Limited to 6 participants
Our Jazz Ensemble III is an advanced ensemble that gives students with previous jazz experience (Jazz Ensemble II or similar) a chance to refine and improve their improvisational and harmonic skills. Ensemble members learn the more advanced jazz and improvisation techniques required to participate in and lead groups themselves, including
- Modes, progressions and harmonies
- Transcribing and aural skills
- Communication within the group
- Intros and outros
- Phrasing, dynamics, harmonic and melodic soloing, motivic development
- Alternative arrangements and different jazz styles
Participants develop these skills by exploring a wide-ranging repertoire of well-known and lesser known standards, including more technically or harmonically challenging pieces. Here are a few that the ensemble has worked on:
- ‘Afternoon in Paris’ – John Lewis
- ‘Black Nile’ – Wayne Shorter
- ‘Bluesette’ – Toots Thielemans
- ‘Desafinado’ – Antônio Carlos Jobim
- ‘Giant Steps’ – John Coltrane
- ‘Jordu’ – Irving Jordan
- ‘Rush Hour’ – Robben Ford
- ‘Tico Tico’ – Zequinha de Abreu
This ensemble is currently limited to six participants, with a limit of one acoustic or electric bass player, one drummer, one pianist and one wind instrument player.
Sing & Swing Jazz Vocal Ensemble
Online Classes
Saturdays 11 am – 12.30 pm
In-School Classes
Saturdays 2 – 3.30 pm
Limited to 8 participants
If you love to sing and swing in group harmony, join the New School’s Sing & Swing Jazz Vocal Ensemble! Led by Melanie O’Reilly, a renowned jazz singer, conductor and teacher with many years’ experience teaching jazz and conducting jazz choirs and ensembles, this small ensemble includes songs and arrangements hand-tailored to the abilities and interests of those who join the group. As well as exploring songs from the Great American Songbook (Irving Berlin, Hoagy Carmichael, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Rogers & Hart, Rogers & Hammerstein and others), later songwriters including Burt Bacharach, Dave Frishberg and Joni Mitchell, and repertoire ranging from blues to bebop to ballads and beyond, the Ensemble will help you with important performance skills such as stage presence, song interpretation, lyric memorisation, rhythm skills and improvisation. We will also explore healthy vocal technique, proper microphone technique, how to blend while singing harmonies and how to convey an emotional message as a group.
Although some previous vocal training or experience (in choirs or solo singing) is necessary to join the Ensemble, previous jazz singing experience is not required.
Sing & Swing will run as a ‘hybrid’ ensemble, with online classes once a week and in-school classes once every four weeks. In-school classes take place in the school’s largest classroom, where a HEPA air filtration/purification unit is installed. And according to government directives concerning indoor gatherings of more than six people, Ensemble members must show proof of vaccination.
Sing Your Heart Out Choir
Thursdays 6.30 – 8 pm
Limited to 20 participants
Love singing but need encouragement? Join the New School’s Sing Your Heart Out Choir and your nerves will disappear! The Choir is led by a renowned choral director and focuses on music from the contemporary, gospel and world traditions. Join it and you’ll have the opportunity to sing some great songs with others, to find and improve your voice, to spend an hour and a half every week ‘singing your heart out’ and making new friends in the process, to improve your health and well-being, and to perform in public for fun and entertainment.
The Choir has performed a huge range of songs over the years – from such Gospel classics as ‘Oh Happy Day’ and ‘Something Inside So Strong’ to such modern classics as ‘Adiemus’, ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Take Me to Church’.
Each class features:
- Lively warm-ups to strengthen your voice and build your technique
- Call & response singing
- Learning to harmonise
- Soloist-choir interplay
Although previous choir experience and music reading are not required, ideally new members will have taken some private voice/singing lessons or our Introducing Singing for Adults course before joining the Choir.
Sing Your Heart Out Choir classes take place in the school’s largest classroom, where a HEPA air filtration/purification unit is installed. In addition, according to government directives concerning indoor gatherings of more than six people, Choir members must show proof of vaccination and wear face masks at all times while in the school – including while singing with the choir. Finally, while COVID-19 restrictions remain in place, a maximum of 20 people can join the Choir (minimum of 15).
a comprehensive music centre in the heart of Dublin.