St. Teresa's National School, Killoe, Co. Longford

'Music Moving Us in Many Ways', performed by the St. Teresa's Killoe Performing Group.
Primary Finalist in the 2024 Waltons RTÉ lyric fm Music for Schools Competition.
When children from Second to Sixth class who wanted to take part in the Music for Schools project met to brainstorm on the 2024 theme, it meant different things to different people. Some talked about how music moves through time, through the decades and through different genres, while others came up with the idea that music moves us through the seasons. Dividing the larger group into smaller ones, one group focused on how music makes us move our bodies and how different types of music make us move in different ways. Another group focused on how music can move us emotionally. They discussed all of these ideas. The students then brought in the instruments they played and suggested songs and tunes that they thought would be suitable to bring their ideas to life. They then worked on parts of different songs that were suggested and composed their own piece to represent the changing of the seasons. The piece starts with a rain stick and body percussion to represent the sound of raindrops - starting from a light autumn drizzle and becoming heavier as the season changes. Percussion instruments join the heavy stamping of feet to represent a winter storm, along with the crash of the cymbals to represent lightning and thunder. The rain eases off as the season changes again, and the chords of D and G on the chime bars represent the sun coming out and the season of spring and new life. The glockenspiels bring some happy descending scales to represent summer, which brings the children such joy.