Bridging the Gap: Skyping Composers & Personalized Program Notes

Last year our band and orchestra spring concert featured a color theme, where each of the tunes selected had a color in the title.  While we were performing, students from the art department were painting to the music.  It was pretty epic, and extremely successful.  The audience left with a lasting memory.

This school year I've been struggling with how to make this year's spring concert bigger and better, and just as memorable and cutting-edge.  It has been over half a school year, and I finally think I have found the idea I've been waiting for!

*Pause for dramatic effect*

Skyping with the composers, and using skype to make brief videos of the composers introducing their tunes.  

Bam.

After researching the topic for mac, I found CALL RECORDER FOR SKYPE (mac only) and EVAER (win only).  The means to do this for free meant complicating things quite extensively. (if you can't drop $20, there are quite a few youtube tutorials and blogs which document the process to accomplish this for free)

I purchased the mac version and LOVE IT because of it's simplicity.  In my opinion, paying the $20 for the recording software was worth it since I do not want to have any recording issues when I'm conducting the interview with the composer/students.  Plus, the mac version features a side-by-side video with the composer which is very cool. (doesn't show up until you watch the video)

Some things to consider:
1. When selecting tunes, the composer must be alive.
2. Have students come up with 1 or 2 questions each, and have them turn them in to you.  Select the best/most asked questions and have them ready to go at the beginning of the interview.
3. Set up the laptop so many of the students can be seen by the composer.
4. It helps if you can run the audio through the school speakers, and the video through the large screen projector.
5.  Make sure to save the video in mp4 format to make it easier to edit the video later for introductory videos before playing each tune at the concert.