This is the first part of an unknown number of posts about a first of a kind instrumental concert that, literally, connected the composers of the music being performed with the audience, conductor, and ensemble. The concert/event took place on May 6th, 2008 at Mercer High School in PA.

Travis J. Weller (noted composer and ME Blogger), and I decided that we wanted to do something, spectacular, out of the box, and -to our knowledge, never been done before that integrated technology, a live performance, and connected with the students in very meaningful way. The now famous SKYPE CONCERT concert band performance at Mercer High School was the result of our brainstorming.

After considerable leg work, we were able to, graciously, have Dr. Andrew Boysen, Dr. Scott Watson, and Mr. Brian Balmages agree to appear, LIVE, at the concert via SKYPE. This idea stemmed from prior work that I have written about and done. Last December I posted about how easy it was for any music teacher to use SKYPE to have a number of experts appear in their classroom. This time, Travis and I decided to see if we could, on a much grander scale, SKYPE experts into a concert setting. We succeeded.

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In the next post I will describe the technical details of how and what we used to make this happen.  Above  is an embedded slide-show of the event in 24 pictures. If you would like to view these pictures on a grander scale, please visit this Picasa Link. I also have edited a 20 minute video of the event that will be posted as part of this series.

I would personally like to thank Dr. Boysen, Dr. Watson, and Mr. Balmages for their willingness to make this, as of now, one-of-a-kind concert, a reality. The student performers, audience, and school faculty and administration in attendance could not believe what a positive and amazing experience this was for all those in attendance and literally sparked a dialog about it and what can be done educational like this that goes on to this day! More to come! Stay tuned…

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