Adventures in Addis

In August 2006 I began my adventure to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Africa. I was offered a position as the Director of Band and Choir for 5-12th grade students at the International Community School of Addis Ababa. Thought it might be a good idea to record my experiences here. I would not have done this journal without a tremendously great friend that I love dearly offering me the idea. Thanks Sadina. I hope you enjoy the journal. -Chris

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Location: Addis Ababa, Africa, Ethiopia

I am a professional percussionist and music educator. I started my performance career in 2000 and my education career in 2002. I am a pretty laid back guy. I work too much. Sometimes I get carried away with how much time I spend at work. But, I do enjoy myself every chance I get.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

What's Happenin

I hope you all have been doing well over there. Sorry it has taken me so long to post another journal entry. You know how it is with most educators at this time of year. It has difinitely been an interesting ride so far. We host an education conference in Addis a couple of weeks ago. It was an organazation called AISA (Association of International Schools in Africa). Kathy and her kids performed and did a great job. When the conference came to our campus my African drumming class played during the afternoon festivities. That marked our first public performance. We recieved some great feedback to. Pretty much we just had a drum circle. But it was a good performance.

Our next performance slightly snook up on us. This Friday my choir will be performing at a benefit concert at the IEC (International Evangelical Church) to help raise money for AIDS and HIV positive individuals. As most of you know, Africa does have the highest percentage of HIV positive people. That doesn't mean that everybody and they momma have aids here. We are a very large county with a small amount of people with aids in regards to the 8 million in the population of Addis alone.

I felt that this would be a great opportunity for our students to get involved in the communtiy by participating in an event to make a difference in the lives of others.

Now, with that out of the way, my purpose here is to rebuild a music program. Even though I have had great feedback from not only my kids, but my parents, administration, and fellow teachers; I still feel as if I am under scrutiny. The pressre that I feel is the pressure I put on myself to not only have my kids have a great aesthetic expereince, but to also to perform to the best of their abilities. Since this is my first time working with them, I have no idea how they will react to their first performance.

No matter what were going to have a great time. My choir starts off the performance and then there will be a variety of instrumentalist and vocalist performaing. At the end of the concert the Motley Singers (a community choir that I joined a month ago) will be performaing as well to finish the show. The community chorus is actually pretty good. We are doing some cool 8-part a capella pieces. It's pretty sweet.

Outside of that, the musical is well under way. We are putting on The Wizard of Oz, with a little bit of music from the Wiz. It should be alright. Now being the music director I have to prepare the vocalists and the pit. Problem: No music parts for the pit. THe version we are doing is outdated and we cannot get the parts. So what am I doing....making many arrangements. Let's just say me and Sibelius (music writing software) are spending a lot of time together.

Anyway,
We have a 3 day weekend coming up. I will try to update this weekend.

Have a great night.

Cameron

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Chris,
Your mom just gave me your blog and I am so very proud of you and what you are doing. I know you will do a terrific job and the kids will get one of the best. Mac

Tue Oct 31, 01:03:00 AM  

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