"Miss Marietta’s Memory Music" is a multimedia collaboration culminating in the video of a children’s book with musical accompaniment. This video is intended to benefit teachers/parents/students, along with supplemental materials for incorporating connection of environments and experiences to the arts. Project participants include author Debbi Ponella (Director/Co-Founder of Kids Compose with over 20 years of experience working with elementary students to explore expressing their creativity through arts, with an emphasis on music composition); illustrator Joi Almonacy (Sacred Heart High School student, Greenwich, CT); Alexa Hughes (8-year-old Sacred Heart student); narrator Marietta Simpson (renowned opera singer, educator, and fellow of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences); composer August Fackler (Indiana University Jacobs School of Music composition and film scoring student); and professional musicians from around the country.

 

This project was conceived as a resource for music teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic; providing direction to facilitate discussing with students ways to imagine and transport themselves to other places—especially when limited by reasons such as a pandemic—and to connect through sounds, sights, movement, and shared experiences incorporating the arts. Miss Marietta’s Memory Music has evolved into an online, multi-generational, multimedia collaboration, but easily adapts to an in-person presentation with a small group of performers, allowing for further exploration of ideas and musical possibilities for elementary students.