LUTOSCHOOL

September 24 – 26, 2013

House of Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra in Warsaw

Art workshops “Lutoschool” were organized as part of the celebration of the Year of Lutosławski by the Witold Lutosławski Society and the Muzyka jest dla wszystkich/ “Music is for everyone” Foundation. The event was held under the patronage of the Mazovian Superintendent of Education, and the partner institutions were: Mazovian Self-Government Teacher Training Center, Mazovian Center for Culture and Art, Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra. The project was carried out with the financial support of the Institute of Music and Dance from the funds of the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

The main goal of the authors of the program concept – Sławomir Wojciechowski and Krzysztof Kwiatkowski – was to conduct a multi-story musical action culminating in an instrumental happening. The finale, partly prepared and partly improvised, performed by the participants, lecturers and professional musicians, was the climax of the workshop day. About 200 students and teachers from middle schools in Warsaw and Mazovia participated in the project. In six groups of a dozen people, they worked under the direction of instructors – artists, theoreticians and educators: Sławomir Wojciechowski, Monika Lech, Anna Kwiatkowska, Dorota Sikora, Krystian Rogoziński and Adam Mazurek, who also played the role of its conductors at the final concert.

Students learned about instruments and how to make sounds. In addition to such instruments as the violin, horn, tubular bells or clarinet, the participants had a number of percussion instruments at their disposal: drums, xylophones, maracas, claves, rattles, boomwhackers (plastic tubes of various lengths and scale), as well as whistles, triangles, cymbals , vuvuzelas or bottlephone. Students could discover the variety of sounds and the possibilities of combining colors.

The workshop also included a walk through the musical labyrinth. Each room of the labyrinth tackles a different issue – from contemporary techniques of playing string instruments presented by the violinist Anna Kwiatkowska and the cellist Mikołaj Pałosz, through a film showing Witold Lutosławski’s compositional technique, to practical beatboxing classes conducted by Patryk TikTak Matela. This part of the classes ended with a chamber concert, during which the youth heard works by 20th-century composers performed by the Brass Quintet composed of musicians from the National Philharmonic as well as Anna Kwiatkowska and Mikołaj Pałosz: “Miniuwertura” by Witold Lutosławski, excerpts from the suite from the musical “West Side Story” by Leonard Bernstein, “Kottos” by Yannis Xenakis and “Sequenza” by Luciano Berio.

The workshop ended with a happening – a collective improvisation, prepared under the direction of Sławomir Wojciechowski. Professional musicians from the National Philharmonic joined the groups of students arranged in a semicircle. The prepared draft of the piece included notation of the order of parts, dynamics, type of sounds (instruments, way of sound production), articulation (e.g. tremolo, glissando) and places of pauses. The duration and pulse of individual phrases were not defined, they depended primarily on the conductors’ intuition, allowing the performers to improvise and reacting to the development of the situation. The whole thing ended with a fragment of tutti in an even pulse, followed by big applause and smiles on the faces.

The partners of the celebration of the Year of Witold Lutosławski in the Lutoschool project were the following schools:

Gimnazjum nr 11 im. Ignacego Jana Paderewskiego w Warszawie
Społeczne Gimnazjum nr 5 STO w Warszawie
Gimnazjum nr 23 im. Ireny Sendlerowej w Warszawie
Gimnazjum nr 28 im. gen. bryg. Franciszka Sznajdego w Warszawie
Gimnazjum Nr 4 Sióstr Felicjanek im. bł. Marii Angeli Truszkowskiej Warszawie
Prywatne Gimnazjum im. Zofii i Jędrzeja Moraczewskich w Sulejówku
Gminne Gimnazjum im. Jana Pawła II w Wieliszewie
Gimnazjum nr 1 z Oddziałami Dwujęzycznymi im. Roberta Schumana w Warszawie