Music director to Salzburg on prestigious scholarship

Renée Morin, Music Director of ACG Sunderland’s primary school in West Auckland, lives and breathes music and has recently achieved something beyond what most hope to ever achieve in their career.

She has been invited by the Orff Institute, which is attached to the University Mozarteum Salzburg, on a scholarship to do a Post Graduate Diploma in Advanced Studies in Music and Dance Education – “Orff Schulwerk”.  She leaves for Salzburg at the end of this month to take up this prestigious opportunity.

The postgraduate diploma is only offered every second year, and an invitation by the Institute is needed to do the year long course.  There are only 15 much sought-after places on this international course.

The past director of the course, Prof. Barbara Haselbach, describes the course as a truly intercultural encounter. “It is held in English and presents a selection of specially gifted students from all parts of the world”, she says.

Renée, originally from Montreal, has been teaching music for 14 years. She has worked with the ‘Orff Approach’ for 10 years, and enthuses about the artistry and the benefits it brings to children. As a child-centred way of learning music, the Orff Approach focuses on learning through doing.

The lessons not only stimulate musical creativity, rhythm and tempo, but also aesthetic qualities, which are more about the child’s awareness of space, time, form, line, design, melodies, improvisation and mood in the music.

Renée says, “Many young people don’t separate movement and sound, and the strength of this pedagogy is to combine movement, sensory awareness, instruments and language for music making. The rhythm of the words from nursery rhymes or poems is often used to start improvisation with non-pitch percussive instruments. Finally, melodies are added in the pentatonic scale, so there are no clashes.

Children who learn through this approach can relate holistically to music and its texture. They also learn non-musical skills that help to manage themselves, relate to others, participate and contribute using visual, verbal and non-verbal information.”

The possibility of studying with some world-renowned teachers from the Institute and to deepen and further her own teaching expertise in this field is an amazing opportunity. Renée says, “I thank the Carl Orff Institute for granting me the scholarship. The natural and holistic process that lies beneath the Orff Schulwerk music making approach is a constant joy.”

To study in Mozart’s birthplace Salzburg adds a level of depth to the music study experience. Renée says, “The search for a true artistic pathway to music education keeps me hungry and I look forward to deepening and furthering my understanding and expertise in this area.”