The Music Man for Region 1

FALLS VILLAGE-It can be easy to forget what truly well- written music sounds like, music without thumping synthesizers and artificial voice compression but played instead on real instruments and sung by voices brimming with emotion. And it's just as easy to forget how children's words and thoughts can be so delicately blithe and clear.

Composer Joshua Stone, a Falls Village resident, is reminding the Northwest Corner of the good and the poignant through a program entitled Windows on the World after the famed restaurant at the top of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. As part of the effort, each student in the the elementary schools in the six-town Region 1 school district is being trained as a songwriter and performer. Individualized song are then being produced for the schools.

"The goal is to celebrate a children's eye-view of the world," said Mr. Stone.

Teaching Artist

A Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism registered teaching artist, he trained at the Manhattan School of Music and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, along with bebop drummer and composer Max Roach and musical theater marvel Stephen Sondheim. Mr. Stone counts HBO, MTV, 21st Century Fox and the White House as clients, and has composed for venues and conducted groups as near as Music Mountain and as far as the Ndere Troupe of Uganda.

He first tested out the Windows on the World program last year when Saint Peter/Saint Francis School in Torrington contacted him to write a song for the school and then teach and record the students singing it. It was a whirlwind weeklong program for 200 children from ages 5 to 14. With very little idea how he was going to accomplish such a massive undertaking in such a short time, he simply launched into the project and to his surprise found an astonishingly powerful response.

Mr. Stone approached the Falls Village Cultural and Community Center, proposing the project for the 1,350 students of Region 1, which serves Kent, Cornwall, Canaan, Falls Village, Sharon and Salisbury.

Funded primarily by the Falls Village organization with contributions of the six schools, the program will run in each school by the end of the year, resulting in a six-song CD representing the musical talents of region. Mr. Stone has already worked with Salisbury Central School, Cornwall Consolidated School and is currently finishing with Lee Kellogg School in Falls Village.

He begins with a writing prompt to which all grades respond. In Salisbury, students elaborated on "In my dreams … ," while in Cornwall they wrote to "In the future I'd be proud to … " and in Falls Village they finished the thought "If a river could talk … ."

Mr. Stone then collapses the lyrics into song format, setting them to the music he composes for each school. Though the process involves some editing or adding a rhyming pattern, the songs remain essentially the students' writing.

At Salisbury Central, one student wrote a sentence about seeing his grandfather laughing in his dreams, a perfect example of a child's precious memory of his dead relative. Perhaps the most poignant moment came when a Lee Kellogg student answered, "If a river could talk, it would name every rain drop that fell nearby."

Using his Digital Wav recorder, a pocket-sized device that records audio files in surround sound, Mr. Stone visits each class kindergarten to eighth grade twice. Every student learns the whole song, but Mr. Stone also captures groups and soloists singing phrases of the music.

"I make the song come to life one line at a time," he explained, also crediting the students with a critical role in the process. "They're owning and building their own song."

The recordings are next downloaded to his computer in his master home studio. Mr. Stone compiles bits from the extensive library he builds out of the classroom visits, folding countless clips, some no more than five seconds, of voices, percussion and sound effects into one song.

"I try to use every single kid," he said.

Detail oriented to an extreme, Mr. Stone recorded the entire kindergarten and first grade individually to ensure he will have the exact voice for one particular line in the Lee Kellogg song. Finding a part for each student is hardly a difficult task, though, as students eagerly participate, cheering on their more shy classmates and thoroughly enjoying the high energy Mr. Stone radiates. The sessions frequently see hair-raising moments when a student breaks into his or her full range and is lost in the fun of singing.

Maria Bulson, Lee Kellogg's principal, related a story of the song surfacing after school hours. While at a town library event, one student began singing the song only to have it picked up by another student in the room.

"There's some more long lasting meaning," said Cornwall Consolidated School principal Kathleen Fitzgibbons. She noted that in an age when test scores and mandates often preoccupy educators' time, the simple act of children singing has a profound impact. Her students performed their song for teachers, parents and members of the Cornwall community during the school's November Brown Bag Lunch Concert.

After Mr. Stone finishes the master recording, students perform the song at a school assembly like Cornwall's. The school then owns the song and can use it for fundraising purposes. North Canaan Elementary School, with its 340 students, is the next stop in Mr. Stone's schedule, then the schools in Sharon and Kent. His thinking is quickly moving beyond Region 1 to dreams of a larger platform.

"I can envision a Windows on the World Foundation," he said, with a system of sister schools full of children composing their own classics and connecting through music.