{"id":58,"date":"2018-05-04T18:25:05","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T18:25:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.nyu.edu\/highbridge\/?page_id=58"},"modified":"2018-05-04T18:25:05","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T18:25:05","slug":"appendix-a-audience-perception","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/kristengravesportfolio.com\/Highbridge\/project\/appendix-a-audience-perception\/","title":{"rendered":"Appendix A: Audience Perception"},"content":{"rendered":"

I arrived at Grace Episcopal Church in White Plains on a chilly Sunday afternoon with plenty of time to set up my video camera and microphone. I was excited to hear the progression the kids had made from rehearsals to performance. The church was formal, and the audience was an interesting mix. Though predominantly an older crowd (between 50 and 70 years old), there were some younger folks in the audience as well (between 20 and 40 years old), and the crowd was pretty evenly split racially between black and white. Though a significant amount of the students in HBV are Latino, this was not represented in the audience.  \"\" I had bought a premium ticket so that I could sit toward the front, and settled in so that I could read through the program. I found the blurb about HBV in the series\u2019 program fascinating:<\/span><\/p>\n

Since 1998, Highbridge Voices has been teaching children to embrace a commitment to excellence. The program provides an extraordinary training experience in choral singing to more than one hundred students in the historically underserved Highbridge neighborhood of the Bronx\u2026 <\/i>(Downtown Music at Grace, 2017, p15).<\/span><\/p>\n

The blurb continued on in this fashion talking through high school and college admission statistics, and featuring academic and personal success. I was not offended by the language, but it got me wondering if the audience, while focusing on the narrative, might project as I initially had, that they were hearing trauma in the voice. These kids sing in a variety of environments, and I\u2019m wondering\u2014when audiences hear these kids, especially for the first time\u2014are they surprised? <\/span><\/p>\n

I know that I was surprised the first time I heard them, and I looked into my surprise with some soul-searching. Were my expectations low because these kids are black and brown? Because they\u2019re poor? Because this is a tuition-free after-school program? I have to admit with honesty, yes. These facts definitely played into my expectations. I\u2019ve been a music teacher for 17 years. I\u2019ve taught children from Fairfield County (most affluent in CT) to Dewey County (one of the poorest in the U.S.), and quite honestly the greatest shock for me is that this program gets 120 kids between the ages of 9-18 to sing in 10 different languages. This program gets 120 kids to sing motets, gospel, and popular music. This program gets 120 kids to sing flawlessly in 4 and 8-part harmony, in tune and<\/i> in rhythm. I would be shocked if they were anyone, and impressed if they were adults, but again, I must admit that I\u2019m additionally shocked because of the little bit that I know about their lives. Their narrative, the story of kids coming to an after-school program to pursue musical and academic excellence despite living in a traumatic environment, is a powerful narrative. Does it influence the way that the audience hears the music? In the future, I plan to interview audience members to hear their perspectives.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his analysis of boy soprano performances, Martin Ashley works through John Cooksey\u2019s interpretation of a boy soprano\u2019s swansong. He investigates the idea that a boy soprano\u2019s voice reaches its most beautiful and most powerful just before adolescence\u2014just before it\u2019s gone. Ashley goes through interviews and waveforms to show how the sound of the pre-pubescent male voice develops just before puberty, and yet much of the interpretation comes down to perception. He explains that the definition of a beautiful performance is inherently subjective. He also acknowledges, albeit briefly, that there\u2019s a sense of bereavement that plays a role in this subjective perception of beauty: a preemptive mourning for what will soon be gone. It may be possible that the voice of the pre-pubescent male nearing adolescence brings present to the listener\u2019s mind that this may be the final performance; the final swansong, and this narrative may affect the interpretation of beauty. I think narrative and perception play a role in hearing the voices of HBV as well. Though the children are talented and hard working, which I want to acknowledge and celebrate, the perception of the beauty (again, subjective) of the sound they create is linked to their narrative. Placing the music they create next to their narrative\u2014the proximity to violence and trauma\u2014enhances the perception of the subjective beauty of their musical performance.<\/span><\/p>\n