Age Appropriate Song choices - your expertise please :)
Mon, 1 Jan 2007, 10:04 pmSLE14 posts in thread
Age Appropriate Song choices - your expertise please :)
Mon, 1 Jan 2007, 10:04 pmBefore I go any further A HUGE THANK YOU for all the wonderful people who I know are going to reply and send me valuable info and who I would love to jump thru the screen and hug and thank personally but I know that would be a huge pain in the proverbial for everyone who'd have to sit thru them all... so this is a thank you to everyone now to get it out of the way... consider yourself thanked and cyber-hugged :)
Now for the question ...
Looking for "age appropriate songs" for my 9 year old who will be 10 when she needs them. Well, she will be 10 when she sings the song so let's aim for something age appropriate for a 10 year old...
Can't be a "belting" song so nothing like Tomorrow from Annie... (I'm no expert or singing teacher so can't explain why but something about my daughter's voice and the word or description coloratura and her future and waiting until she has stopped growing and THEN teaching her chest voice techniques is ALL I can tell you about why she is not singing belting/chest voice types songs that are typical of kids...and her singing teacher is not just any old singing teacher so we bow to her wisdom...)
... so we're looking for songs sung in ... have no idea what you'd call it - head voice? soprano? let me put it this way - she wants to be an opera singer when she is older but also wants to do musical theatre maybe... (she's 9 - she can be a brain surgeon if she wants! I don't care what she becomes as long as her ambition is higher than a coles check out chick or a stripper! but since she was knee high to a grasshopper right thru to now, she's always said when she grows up she is going to sing for people, so for now, as we have done the past 8 or so years, let's just go with that...) ... she sings opera songs that people her age aren't supposed to be able to sing (Mein Herr Marquis from Die Fledermaus; a modified Poor Wandering One... that sort of thing) plus things like Bali Hai and Camelot - using her soprano/head voice. So hope this description helps you when you are thinking of age appropriate songs that have to pass an adjudicator in a competition...
There is a local talent quest held here each year and she has won either her age group vocal or musical theatre group every year so far... I've been tipped off that the only reason she didn't win both sections last year was song choice (hey - they haven't invented any opera songs for a 9 year old!) Anyhow... I've been trying to coax her into doing one of the Little Red Riding hood songs from Into the Woods but she's humming and hahing and then it occured to me - YOU guys! You are my experts :) I figure if you don't know, nobody will!
Can you think of any non-belting age appropriate songs for a 10 year old soprano? For a general vocal section AND a musical theatre section.
If you need more info - just ask :) And again - thank you soooooo much for any help you can send.
Happy new year everyone!
DFE
Oh, I hadn't thought of that Logos! thanks!
Mon, 8 Jan 2007, 10:31 pmthanks Tony... you know, that never occurred to me - what you said about the songs being imposed upon her and not being her choice or whatever... I wonder how we can get around that? She chose a song to sing in a talent quest last year - I emphasise, SHE chose it - I didn't and even her singing teacher said it probably wouldn't pass the age appropriate test but we had a "she wants to sing it so let's give it a whirl" type attitude... so she sang Mein Herr Marquis (The Laughing Song) from Die Fledermaus. She had a ball and loved every minute of it - which to me is the important thing. She got a lot of lovely attention and nice feedback but yes, when it came to the judging, she was marked down and it was clearly stated that it was because the song wasn't age appropriate.
She loves those types of songs though and if she had her way she'd sing The Doll Song from Tales of Hoffman at the next comp because she loves that too, but after the Laughing Song experience, being marked down for song choice supported me in my argument to her that maybe she should wait until she's older and she can sing her favourite songs then... I'm still trying to convince her to this day :) Hence my idea to get opinions and at least interest her in some song choices that will be considered age appropriate. She's at least agreed to this and we have a list of:
Bali Hai
La Pastorella
Castle on a Cloud and Where is Love (suggestions from this site!)
This is for just the vocal section - not a musical theatre entry - but still, has to be age appropriate and I don't know about those first 2 options which are leading in the favourite stakes so far...
As for her being "lucky" - I don't know about that - we, her parents, consider ourselves the lucky ones. According to the experts over many many years we never be parents. She came along many years later when we had given up all hope and weren't even thinking about it anymore due to our ages... she is our little miracle and there is nothing we wouldn't do to support her and give her an enriched, fulfilled and happy life experience :) Especially as we can't give her a family and brothers and sisters which she would have loved to have had!
:)
DFE