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SCARSDALE, N.Y. Scarsdale music teacher Jessica Elkhatib is dispensing with the typical elementary school orchestra selections for Quaker Ridge Elementary School's end-of-the year concert. Instead, the young musicians will be presenting songs made popular by contemporary superstars Adele, Bruno Mars and OneRepublic.
The tunes are being arranged and scored for the elementary group by Scarsdale High School juniors Andy Sherman, Eric Kwong and Nathan Kim using special software to speed up and simplify the process.
Sherman spent some time at Quaker Ridge recently to show the orchestra members how the software works and how the songs are taken from their original state and retooled for the elementary instrumentation.
"Adapting these popular songs in the classroom really sparks interest and gets the kids excited about playing," said Elkhatib. "The incorporation of pop culture and technology in the curriculum allows the student to draw upon what they already know about strings in a new creative way."
Sherman, like fellow A School students, has internship time during January and is spending it at Quaker Ridge working with Elkhatib. It's the first time he has done any arranging, but he is an accomplished performer, playing guitar and keyboards in the band Eclypse.
"We played at Bamboozle," he said. "Thousands of bands entered The Break contest and we were picked" for a slot in the annual festival. The band performed May 2, 2010 at The Meadowlands in New Jersey. Sherman said the players are all from Scarsdale, but the lead singer is from New York City.
As for the Quaker Ridge project, Sherman said he has just started using Sibelius software, which allows for fast musical notation, but he is more familiar with Logic Pro, which he calls "a much more confusing program, more for recording."
The Sibelius program, which is being introduced to the elementary pupils, also allows for copying and pasting, instant transposition - lowering or raising the music to a different key - and changing instrumentation such as converting a flute part, for instance, into a violin part. The software makes it easy, for instance, to combine two pop songs "Secrets" and "Someone Like You" into a medley to take advantage of their similar bass lines, Elkhatib said.
"We are having a great time," she said, "and really learning a lot."
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