Kirby tailors program to student audience

SEELEY LAKE – The March 12 issue of the Seeley Swan Pathfinder carried a report on the multimedia presentation Scott Kirby presented the previous Sunday in Condon. That presentation primarily addressed the adults of our communities. When Alpine Artisan's 2 Valleys Stage arranges these community performances, it also contracts with the artists to offer presentations and workshops in the local schools. In his presentations at Swan Valley School, Potomac Elementary, Seeley Lake Elementary and Seeley-Swan High School, Kirby focused on expanding the students' understanding of music and art, as well as providing a sense of the character of the high plains prairies.

Choosing from his "Main Street Souvenirs" presentation those parts of particular interest to the younger audience, Kirby introduced the students to "days of yore" schoolhouses and baseball games using old photos interspersed with his own artwork. He played accompanying ragtime, boogie woogie and rousing march music made famous by such greats as Scott Joplin and John Philip Sousa.

For the high school students, Kirby expanded on how ragtime was the beginning of pop music. Kirby said, "Like most pop musical styles, it was hated by the musical establishment. And parents said it was corrupting the youth of America!"

Kirby shared with all the students clips from his interviews with local amateur historians from Potomac, Seeley Lake and Condon, and he included photos from Garnet Ghost Town accompanied by "eerie, creepy electronic music" that he composed. He praised the local museums, showed video footage of some of the items in them and urged the students to visit and see all the other items on display.

In a special workshop with the SLE third graders, Kirby explained the inner workings of a piano. He first established through question and answer that "piano" is an Italian word meaning quiet. The full name of the instrument is "pianoforte" which means quiet and loud, identifying it as the first keyboard instrument that can be played either softly or forcefully.

With the front piece removed from the upright piano, Kirby demonstrated how the piano can be played like a harp as he ran his thumbnail across the inside strings. The students took turns coming close and seeing how each key acted like a teeter-totter: when the key was pushed down, a corresponding hammer hit a string and produced a sound. The hammers associated with the lower keys only hit one string, while the upper keys each hit three strings to produce the higher sounds. Kirby told the students there are 52 moving parts for each piano key, more parts than are in most cars.

Third grade teacher Kristy Pohlman prompted her students to correlate what they were learning about the piano with an instrument-making project they had worked on in their classroom. The students noted how the thickness of the lower-note strings on the piano corresponded to the thicker rubber bands they had used on their instruments, while the thinner strings corresponded to the thinner rubber bands that produced higher tones.

Kirby also discussed piano tuning with the students. He showed them the special instrument used to turn the pegs holding the piano strings and demonstrated how the sound changed as he turned the peg and tightened the string.

In the second part of Kirby's program to the four schools he focused on prairies. Students in the western part of Montana are so used to the sight of mountains and forests that many, especially the younger ones, have no real sense of what the high plains country, with its prairies and grasslands and hard scrabble farming is like. With his paintings of farmhouses and silos, country churches and swirling windy skies, complemented by music he had composed to accompany the pictures, Kirby invited the students to immerse themselves in a sense of what the eastern part of Montana is like.

The third graders commented on the lack of people and animals in his paintings. Kirby said he thought of the buildings as people. While insisting everyone can take whatever they want from a painting, he said for him the buildings, the tilled fields, the sweeping skies portray a sense of what is important in the lives of the people who live there.

In some of the schools, Kirby introduced the students to video editing and how to compose a slide show such as the one he presented. Though not useful in a serious presentation, one of the options the kids found fascinating was the ability to change a voice to make it sound like the speaker had inhaled gas from a helium balloon.

In all the schools, Kirby led the students to reflect on the modern availability to music in this age of computers, phones and other recording and play-back devises. He said a century ago, the only way to hear music was if someone played or sang it.

"Singing was everywhere," Kirby said. "People sang to all their activities, doing the dishes, hanging out the laundry, going for a walk. There were barbershop quartets, school songs, campaign songs, glee clubs, serenades, sea shanties, work songs and choirs. The home entertainment system back then was the piano. And gathering around it was the favorite leisure activity."

Kirby said in the previous centuries nine out of 10 people were amateur musicians. Now the ratio is only one out of 10. He said, "I encourage you to keep playing music. It's something you can do all the time. It makes you healthier and happier. And it's good for your brain."