MUSIC FOR THE MASSES
CPO arranges free online lessons
The Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra is looking to boost musical literacy in Canada with an ambitious program that will make a webbased music education platform free to anyone with a Canadian IP address for a year.
The CPO has partnered with the France-based music-learning platform Meludia, which has developed 625 progressively difficult online interactive exercises that can be used by users with varying degrees of expertise, from musical newbies to professional musicians. The initiative will also see a team from Meludia introduce the platform to schools, community centres, universities, retirement homes and even prisons across the country in 2018.
The program could reach up to 40 million people, says Meludia vice-president Kevin Kleinmann. While it is currently in 168 countries, this is the largest national deployment since the platform launched in 2012.
“This is unprecedented in its size that we would do a nation of over 35 million people,” says Kleinmann, who joined officials from the CPO at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
Starting Wednesday, Canadians and visitors to Canada can log on to the platform and get unlimited access. The exercises are divided into ‘Discovery’, ‘Intermediate’ and ‘Advanced’ modules, and are based on 30 years of research by French composer Vincent Chaintrier. Unlike most music courses taught in schools, Meludia does not focus on reading music. It’s based on sensation and emotion and patterned after how children learn spoken languages.
The exercises cover everything from determining whether a passage of music is ascending or descending, to detecting the differences between major and minor chords, to more advanced listening activities.
While no one at the news conference would say how much the initiative costs, it is being paid for by the CPO and a private donation from Jeremy Clark, of Calgary’s Clark Hetherington Financial. Clark is a CPO subscriber and sits on the board of trustees for the orchestra’s foundation.
Calgary Philharmonic president and CEO Paul Dornian said that beyond the educational value of the program, the initiative will also help market the orchestra in Calgary and beyond, and groom a new generation of concertgoers.
“When people go on and access this from wherever in Canada and download it, they’ll see (CPO music director Rune Bergmann) and he’ll greet them and he’ll be branding for the Calgary Philharmonic,” says Dornian. “We strive to be relevant to every single person in the community. Not all of them are going to come down to the Jack Singer Concert Hall, but we want to find a way to touch them and make their lives better.”
The platform will be free until Dec. 5, 2018. After that, Dornian says he hopes more funding is found to continue the program.
“My dream would be that some of our tax dollars then get expended,” he says.
Visit meludia.com to access the platform.