At the time when the bells of the Spring Festival in the Year of the Tiger are about to ring
Symphony Orchestra from Huining County Huishi Middle School
New Year blessings for everyone
There is no glittering concert hall
On the rugged Loess Plateau
The majestic symphony is loud in the ears
In this small county town on the northwestern border
The symphony orchestra has been in existence for a full decade
In August 2011, Huishi Middle School in Huining County, Gansu Province, set up a class-based symphony orchestra composed of 57 rural children who did not know musical scores and had never touched an instrument, and was named "Einstein Class".
At that time, no one would have imagined that this barren and isolated land would play a magnificent symphony, and no one would have imagined that these children would create one amazing miracle after another in the future...
At the beginning of the orchestra, most of these students did not know anything about music theory, and they had never seen classical instruments such as saxophones and trumpets, but with their enthusiasm for music, they spent all their rest days on orchestra rehearsals.
On New Year's Day 2012, the orchestra, which was only five months old, successfully performed its first concert at the Huining County Auditorium. Then on August 23, 2012, they won the first prize in the National Secondary School Band Competition.
This award greatly boosted the confidence of teachers and students, but also let the orchestra begin to rise to fame, the school invited the head of the Jinfan Art Troupe Hai Qianwen from Beijing to give students more professional guidance.
Hai Qianwen lamented that such a rudimentary band could play such a difficult repertoire as "Trumpeter's Festival" and "Beijing Good News Transmission Border Village". After returning home, she made a special trip to Shanghai to visit Mr. Wilt, artistic director of the Vienna Musikverein Children's Choir, and told the story of the symphony orchestra in the mountains.
In November 2012, Mr. Wilt personally wrote an invitation to the RendezvousEn Symphony Orchestra to perform in austria's Musikverein, a legendary musical hall that embraced them like a dream.
On the evening of February 3, 2013, local time in Austria, the Vienna Golden Hall was brightly lit and full of high-level friends, and the special concert of "Meet Vienna - Symphony Night of the Austrian Chinese Arts Festival" was officially opened, and 67 students of the Huishi Middle School Orchestra played four pieces of music" "Trumpeter's Festival", "African Symphony", "Red Mezan" and "Ode to the Red Flag", which lasted for 27 minutes, becoming the only orchestra to play 4 pieces of music that night.
The first time to go abroad, the Huishi Middle School Orchestra
He handed over a brilliant report card
Even though the price of the entire group's instruments did not match the price of a top violin, their performance deeply shocked everyone present that night, and after the performance, the endless applause resounded throughout the Golden Hall.
From Zhuangyuan County to Symphony
The exploration of education is an eternal theme rooted in this soil
According to the old principal Wu Taixiang, the original intention of establishing this orchestra was his practical attempt to combine art education and science education. In order to avoid getting bogged down in exam-taking education and hindering students' creativity and interests, he was inspired by Harvard's "Zero Point Project" in art education to create this unique experimental class.
Photo: The picture above shows students running and exercising at Huining County No. 2 Middle School in 2001 (photo by Wu Bin, Xinhua News Agency), and below is a symphony performed outdoors by students of the Huining County Huishi Middle School Symphony Orchestra on January 19, 2022 (photo by Ma Xiping, Xinhua News Agency).
But at the beginning, Wu Taixiang's forward thinking was not recognized by most people, few people signed up for the orchestra class, and the teachers were not optimistic. Faced with the huge pressure of the promotion rate and the huge funds needed to purchase musical instruments, Wu Taixiang did not give up, but sold his house to make money, transformed the bicycle shed into a rehearsal hall, and let Du Zhengquan, the only teacher in the school who had learned basic music theory knowledge, serve as the class teacher and the head of the group.
To the surprise of the old principal Wu Taixiang, the children's academic performance of the orchestra did not drop but rose, and these students who had a weak learning foundation before exploded their learning potential in the process of learning music.
As the orchestra moved from the county to the international, these children gained a lot of things that could not be learned from books, and after seeing the wider world outside, the children's ambitions were more ambitious and their willpower was more tenacious.
It is also more sunny and confident, more united, more enthusiastic and more interested in learning and life.
Interest is the best teacher
Education is teaching and educating people
"Give the class back to the students"
"Make education happy"
Ten years on
"Double subtraction" is positive
Huishi Middle School issued the "Ten Articles of Burden Reduction"
The school's symphony orchestra is even more prosperous
The 10th to 10th orchestras have outstanding academic and professional performance
The latest Eleventh Regiment currently has more than 120 students enrolled
A shift in the perception of the educational community and parents
Let the orchestra become a burden on parents
A place for students to relax
Students use the winter vacation time to rehearse performances, "Ode to the Red Flag", "Long March Suite" and so on have become the reserved repertoire of the orchestra, and there are many other special clubs such as chess, dance, painting and so on.
According to the current principal Yang Zehua, Huishi Middle School has reached a consensus with parents, teachers and students: happiness is the source of interest.
These children who love music will have a broader world and a brighter future.
(Source: Synthesized from Xinhua Net, Gansu Daily, Little Performers)
【Short Comment】
Educate people with morality and enlighten wisdom with art. Music opened the children's horizons and planted dreams as precious as gold in their hearts. Enthusiasm and persistence, sweat and smile, swing intertwined, together compose the notes of growth.
Huining County has changed from "hard learning" and teachers "hard teaching" to the current "music learning" and "smart learning", using art to promote innovative education, paying attention to talent learning and paying more attention to personality cultivation. Teachers' dedication to education picks up the talents and potential of each child and helps them harvest more full fruits of life.
This symphony from the Loess Plateau has played the surging in the hearts of every child, and has also played the gorgeous music of education reform and strong country!
Copywriter: Yang Li