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IMMIGRANT SONGS: Elise Witt incorporates music in teaching English
We are all the kin of immigrants or refugees — if you go back far enough. In the past three to four decades the sociopolitical upheavals in other countries have created a need for sanctuary and asylum for millions of people, many forced to leave their homeland due to violence, terrorism, oppression, and extreme poverty. As the need for support services in the US has increased, Clarkston, Georgia has become a safe and welcome haven for many of these refugees. However, basic housing and social support only scratches the surface of need.
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My Journey Yours with Cantus
by Elise Witt© Non Si Sa Mai Music ASCAP A Selection from the Elise Witt Choral Series SATB, SSAA, TTBB Song Arrangements > Visit Cantus Online
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CODING IN MUSIC: ELISE WITT TEACHES HOW CODES CAN HELP MAKE MUSIC
“It’s important to know that it is not necessary for a musician to be able to read music to make music,” says Ms. Elise, Artist-in-Residence. “Many musicians learn and create music by ear. Written music is just a code, a language for musicians to communicate with each other.”
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Change the Story Change the World features Elise Witt: All Singing
“Change the Story/ Change the World” is a chronicle of art and community transformation across the globe hosted by Musician, Educator, Activist Bill Cleveland. In each episode, Bill introduces listeners to creative change agents working to re-imagine and recreate the social, political, and cultural narratives that define their communities.
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Ready or Not: A Community Art Project
Elise Witt’s “Ready or Not” imagines our human journeys, through the image of packing a magic suitcase. Join our #ReadyorNotSuitcase Community Art Project on Facebook and Instagram! @ReadyOrNotSuitcase
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A BREATH of SONG takes a deep dive into “Song Deep in Your Bones”
I met creator Elise Witt online during the pandemic, when we were both in a course led by the extraordinary improviser Rhiannon… I was honored, because I already knew of Elise as a composer of unusual choral work that I had explored doing with my community chorus. In fact this piece was conceived as a choral piece, and Elise very generously let me excerpt a bit of it to be a pocket song.
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Elise’s GVP STUDENTS WRITE, CREATE, REMIX NEW MUSIC IN SONGWRITERS’ CLUB
How do we deal with the many feelings we experience while stuck at home and living through a pandemic? For some GVP students, the answer is through songwriting. A new student-led Songwriters’ Club has flourished at GVP as a unique space for students to explore composing their own songs and remixing others’. Students meet weekly via Zoom to workshop original lyrics and share their latest creations with peers. They swap techniques for using GarageBand, a digital music creation studio available on their iPads. And the finished products are impressive: as STEAM Coordinator Danielle Ereddia says, “It’s not only that students are writing lyrics, they’re writing melodies and using loops, voice filters, and instruments on GarageBand to construct multi-layered songs…with up to 14 different tracks on one song.”
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JENNY JENKINS
Traditional folk song with new verses by Elise Witt
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the Atlanta Archivist interviews Elise Witt on the Global Village Project
Featuring the Global Village Project, a space for young women to preserve their culture while learning and adapting to life in a new country.
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AJC: Elise Witt Celebrates a Lifetime of Song
Musicians honor Atlanta songstress for her contributions. Elise Witt, one of the godmothers of vocalism in Atlanta, has coached and counseled singers all over the world. Hundreds have subscribed to her classes in town and thousands have heard her perform, as a bandleader, a soloist and choral director.
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ArtsATL: Elise Witt uses Her New Songbook to Invite the Whole World to Sing
Ever since Elise Witt moved to Atlanta in 1977, the acclaimed folk singer, educator and activist has made it her duty to foster community through song.
“This is the body of work,” Witt says. “Everything I do is extremely eclectic. There are songs in the songbook you can sit at home and play on your guitar, songs you can sing with friends on the front porch and songs you can sing with a choir.” -
City Lights: Lois Reitzes on “All Singing: The Elise Witt Songbook”
Lois Reitzes talks with Atlanta-based singer/songwriter Elise Witt about the “All Singing: The Elise Witt Songbook Release Concert.”
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Creative Loafing: Elise Witt Celebrates a Life of Music
Few contemporary artists come close to matching Witt’s impact on the number of communities she has become a part of in order to help them through her deeds and music. From her modest Pine Lake home to countries the world over, Witt reaches people everywhere with her determined sense of social justice and equality for all and her commitment to advocating for the neediest among us.
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Night Blooming Jasmine with Spark Chorus
by Elise Witt
© Non Si Sa Mai Music ASCAP
sung by Springdale Park Elementary Spark
Atlanta GA ~ Directed by Brianne Turgeon -
Spiral ~ New Music Video Release!
Check out our new music video for Spiral – we just entered it into NPR tiny desk contest!
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Audio Interview with Elise Witt on WOMEN ON AIR (2015)
hosted by Susan Lachmann
on WETS-FM, Jonesboro TN -
Musicguy247’s Interview with Elise WittA celebration of people involved in music
Elise Witt – An interview with the singer, composer, educator, recording artist and community activist. “I wanted to contribute to change and connect to people through my music.” Elise Witt is a person who is driven to make the world a better place through music and the performing arts. After being born in Switzerland and spending her early childhood in upstate New York, Elise was raised in the southern U.S. state of North Carolina and since 1977 has made Georgia her home. Her mother used to sing in a choir in Switzerland and Elise carries on that singing tradition. Her main interests through her school years were languages of the world. She would study this in college and is fluent in French, German, Italian, Spanish and English.
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Elise Witt – Using Song in All the Best Ways by Barbara McAfee
I met Elise Witt years ago when she came to Minneapolis to lead a singing workshop. In that afternoon together, I learned songs from her that I am still singing today. It was also the beginning of long, deep and inspiring friendship, fostered by my frequent visits to Atlanta. What a blessing that she lives in the same town as my brother and his family! We have sung a number of concerts together and always cherish the way our work – like our voices – intertwine.
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CoNNeCTioNS The Newsletter Of Music For People features Earbone and Improvisation
The idea that sound goes on forever, and that any sound we make is in the universe forever, is something to deeply consider in these controversial times.
I was born in Switzerland and came to the US at age 4. I was sent to a nursery school where all the children were communicating with each other in strange sounds that I had never heard.
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Our Global Roots – Alternate Roots Artists Respond to Immigration in the Deep South
Elise and the Global Village Project, along with Ecuadoran/New Orleans performance artist José Torres-Tama,are featured in this article for Public, a Journal of Imagining America, exploring higher education and public engagement.
For the past 40 years, Alternate ROOTS has been a champion of, and resource for, artists, cultural workers, and progressive movement builders in the southern United States. In this article, Nicole Gurgel interviews two longtime ROOTS members—Elise Witt and José Torres-Tama—and explores these artists’ responses to the global challenges the Deep South is facing.
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Pass It On! the journal of the Children’s Music Network features Elise with Good Vibrations
In music, a tuning fork is a classic vibratory instrument providing true pitch, used as a guide to all other tonal relationships. In life, it is Elise Witt.
Born in Switzerland to survivors of Nazi Germany, raised in North Carolina, Elise makes her home in Atlanta, Georgia. Speaking fluent Italian, French, German, Spanish, and English and singing in more than a dozen languages, Elise’s passion for music and language has carried her around the nation and across the seas. “My work and my life are all about sound,” says the multi-instrumentalist and longtime member of the Children’s Music Network.
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Amoeba wins MASC Silver Award
My song “Amoeba” won a Silver Award at the Mid-Atlantic Song Contest, awarded by the Songwriters Association of Washington!
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The Children’s Music Network revisits Thank You
From the Archives at The Children’s Music Network: Thank You by Elise Witt. “Thank You” was written during a residency at Garden Hills Elementary School in Atlanta GA. My students spoke 40 different languages among them, and we all shared the way our culture says “thank you.”
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International Songstress Elise Witt Launches “We’re All Born Singing”
Lake Claire neighbors know Elise for her Impromptu Glorious Chorus™ community singing classes and workshops, which she has taught in our neighborhood since she moved to Atlanta in 1977 as a founding member of the Theatrical Outfit. Currently, Elise is teaching at the Candler Park Yoga Studio, and the next 6-week session runs Monday evenings 7:30 – 8:45 p.m., Oct. 12 – Nov. 23.
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WABE – Atlanta Composer And Educator: ‘We’re All Born Singing’
“We’re All Born Singing:” that’s the name of a new CD and book from Atlanta-area composer and singer Elise Witt. It’s also her paradigm as a music educator. Witt will officially launch her album with a concert at Decatur’s Oakhurst Baptist Church at 7 p.m. Thursday, but she gave Amy Kiley a preview. Witt began by explaining how she herself was born singing.
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Alternate ROOTS – ELISE WITT RELEASES NEW ALBUM
We’re All BORN SINGING is a wild departure from the 11 previous recordings of our ROOTS song leader. Spoken word, choral pieces, and soundscapes, join with an array of lush arrangements celebrating the power of music — especially singing — to vibrate us body and soul and bring us together as community.
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Arts ATL – Elise Witt soars … on new CD “We’re All BORN SINGING”
“My voice is my sword,” says Atlanta singer/songwriter Elise Witt, who celebrates the release of her 12th CD with a concert at Oakhurst Baptist Church on Thursday, October 1 at 7 p.m. “I think this is my most activist album yet.”
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Atlanta INtown – Songbird Elise Witt to debut new album Oct. 1
Atlanta-based singer-songwriter Elise Witt has spent her entire adult life making a living as a singer. Those with deep Atlanta roots will remember her band from the ’80s, Elise Witt and the Small Family Orchestra, a staple act at community events and social justice demonstrations.
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Elise receives William L. Womack Creative Arts Award
Elise Witt is the recipient of the William L. Womack Creative Arts Award, which acknowledges artistic expression of a person or group that is using their talent to build bridges of understanding between diverse communities.
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MUSIC CHANGES EVERYTHING at The Global Village Project
Published by Alternate ROOTS Online Journal. The first bone to develop in a baby is the Earbone. The last sense we lose before passing from this life is the sense of sound. Babies are born with all sounds, and to learn the language spoken around them, they eliminate the sounds they don’t need. … Read More …
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White County News | Elise Witt: “She could get a colony of ants singing!”
Apr 25, 2013 | by Ivy Rutzky
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Times Georgian | Clear Rivers Chorus: Music with a purpose
Sep 14, 2012 | by Times-Georgian
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CARY ACADEMY | Learning the International Language of Song
Apr 7, 2011 | by the Cary Academy
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Atlanta Journal Constitution | From War to Warmth : Refugee Teens Find a Haven and Hope at Global Village School
Mar 14, 2010 | by Maureen Downey
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Live Radio Concert hosted by Pat Crawford w/Elise Witt & Mick Kinney, Mary Youngblood (Native American flute), Gove Scrivenor, Josh Lampkin (2004)
Live Radio Concert hosted by Pat Crawford w/Elise Witt & Mick Kinney, Mary Youngblood (Native American flute), Gove Scrivenor, Josh Lampkin (2004)
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Il giovanissimo duo “Toys in the Attic” (The very young duo “Toys in the Attic”)
Mar 5, 2004 | by a.z of eco risoeglio
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Live Radio Concert hosted by Pat Crawford w/Elise Witt, Alison Brown Quartet, and Velma Frye (2002)
Live Radio Concert hosted by Pat Crawford w/Elise Witt, Alison Brown Quartet, and Velma Frye (2002)
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Connections | Singing for Fun Classes
Nov 20, 2002 | by Connections
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Pass It On | Singing Hands : A Vocal and Percussion Residency
Oct 29, 2001 | by Elise Witt & the Children’s Music Network
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Pass It On | Multiple Languages, Multiple Learning Styles
Dec 29, 1999 | by Children’s Music Network
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Dekalb Neighbor | Local songstress teaches joys of music
Sep 1, 1999 | by Nicole Lee
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Keeping Your Witts About You
Dec 20, 1997 | by Asa Tapley
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Hawkinsville Dispatch | Hawkinsville Now, Kennedy Center in Washington Next
Dec 9, 1995 | by Hawkinsville Dispatch Staff Writer
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Chalk Talk | Sing in Many Languages
Feb 13, 1992 | by Chalk Talk Staff Writer
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Dekalb Extra | Learning Perfect Harmony
Feb 13, 1992 | by Holly Crenshaw
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The Courier-Journal
Elise Witt and Phyllis Free in ConcertNov. 30, 1991 | by Kristin Faurest
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Creative Loafing | Tuning the Native Instrument
Jan 8, 1983 | by Ward Silver
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Change the Story Change the World features Elise Witt: All Singing
“Change the Story/ Change the World” is a chronicle of art and community transformation across the globe hosted by Musician, Educator, Activist Bill Cleveland. In each episode, Bill introduces listeners to creative change agents working to re-imagine and recreate the social, political, and cultural narratives that define their communities.
-
A BREATH of SONG takes a deep dive into “Song Deep in Your Bones”
I met creator Elise Witt online during the pandemic, when we were both in a course led by the extraordinary improviser Rhiannon… I was honored, because I already knew of Elise as a composer of unusual choral work that I had explored doing with my community chorus. In fact this piece was conceived as a choral piece, and Elise very generously let me excerpt a bit of it to be a pocket song.
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on the Choral Commons
This interview was conducted on May 12, 2021 by Emilie Amrein and André de Quadros, founders of the Choral Commons.
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the Atlanta Archivist interviews Elise Witt on the Global Village Project
Featuring the Global Village Project, a space for young women to preserve their culture while learning and adapting to life in a new country.
-
-
AJC: Elise Witt Celebrates a Lifetime of Song
Musicians honor Atlanta songstress for her contributions. Elise Witt, one of the godmothers of vocalism in Atlanta, has coached and counseled singers all over the world. Hundreds have subscribed to her classes in town and thousands have heard her perform, as a bandleader, a soloist and choral director.
-
ArtsATL: Elise Witt uses Her New Songbook to Invite the Whole World to Sing
Ever since Elise Witt moved to Atlanta in 1977, the acclaimed folk singer, educator and activist has made it her duty to foster community through song.
“This is the body of work,” Witt says. “Everything I do is extremely eclectic. There are songs in the songbook you can sit at home and play on your guitar, songs you can sing with friends on the front porch and songs you can sing with a choir.” -
City Lights: Lois Reitzes on “All Singing: The Elise Witt Songbook”
Lois Reitzes talks with Atlanta-based singer/songwriter Elise Witt about the “All Singing: The Elise Witt Songbook Release Concert.”
-
Creative Loafing: Elise Witt Celebrates a Life of Music
Few contemporary artists come close to matching Witt’s impact on the number of communities she has become a part of in order to help them through her deeds and music. From her modest Pine Lake home to countries the world over, Witt reaches people everywhere with her determined sense of social justice and equality for all and her commitment to advocating for the neediest among us.
-
Audio Interview with Elise Witt on WOMEN ON AIR (2015)
hosted by Susan Lachmann
on WETS-FM, Jonesboro TN -
Musicguy247’s Interview with Elise WittA celebration of people involved in music
Elise Witt – An interview with the singer, composer, educator, recording artist and community activist. “I wanted to contribute to change and connect to people through my music.” Elise Witt is a person who is driven to make the world a better place through music and the performing arts. After being born in Switzerland and spending her early childhood in upstate New York, Elise was raised in the southern U.S. state of North Carolina and since 1977 has made Georgia her home. Her mother used to sing in a choir in Switzerland and Elise carries on that singing tradition. Her main interests through her school years were languages of the world. She would study this in college and is fluent in French, German, Italian, Spanish and English.
-
Our Global Roots – Alternate Roots Artists Respond to Immigration in the Deep South
Elise and the Global Village Project, along with Ecuadoran/New Orleans performance artist José Torres-Tama,are featured in this article for Public, a Journal of Imagining America, exploring higher education and public engagement.
For the past 40 years, Alternate ROOTS has been a champion of, and resource for, artists, cultural workers, and progressive movement builders in the southern United States. In this article, Nicole Gurgel interviews two longtime ROOTS members—Elise Witt and José Torres-Tama—and explores these artists’ responses to the global challenges the Deep South is facing.
-
WABE – Atlanta Composer And Educator: ‘We’re All Born Singing’
“We’re All Born Singing:” that’s the name of a new CD and book from Atlanta-area composer and singer Elise Witt. It’s also her paradigm as a music educator. Witt will officially launch her album with a concert at Decatur’s Oakhurst Baptist Church at 7 p.m. Thursday, but she gave Amy Kiley a preview. Witt began by explaining how she herself was born singing.
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City Lights: Lois Reitzes on “All Singing: The Elise Witt Songbook”
Lois Reitzes talks with Atlanta-based singer/songwriter Elise Witt about the “All Singing: The Elise Witt Songbook Release Concert.”
-
Audio Interview with Elise Witt on WOMEN ON AIR (2015)
hosted by Susan Lachmann
on WETS-FM, Jonesboro TN -
WABE – Atlanta Composer And Educator: ‘We’re All Born Singing’
“We’re All Born Singing:” that’s the name of a new CD and book from Atlanta-area composer and singer Elise Witt. It’s also her paradigm as a music educator. Witt will officially launch her album with a concert at Decatur’s Oakhurst Baptist Church at 7 p.m. Thursday, but she gave Amy Kiley a preview. Witt began by explaining how she herself was born singing.
-
Live Radio Concert hosted by Pat Crawford w/Elise Witt & Mick Kinney, Mary Youngblood (Native American flute), Gove Scrivenor, Josh Lampkin (2004)
Live Radio Concert hosted by Pat Crawford w/Elise Witt & Mick Kinney, Mary Youngblood (Native American flute), Gove Scrivenor, Josh Lampkin (2004)
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Live Radio Concert hosted by Pat Crawford w/Elise Witt, Alison Brown Quartet, and Velma Frye (2002)
Live Radio Concert hosted by Pat Crawford w/Elise Witt, Alison Brown Quartet, and Velma Frye (2002)
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Il giovanissimo duo “Toys in the Attic” (The very young duo “Toys in the Attic”)
Mar 5, 2004 | by a.z of eco risoeglio
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Ready or Not: A Community Art Project
Elise Witt’s “Ready or Not” imagines our human journeys, through the image of packing a magic suitcase. Join our #ReadyorNotSuitcase Community Art Project on Facebook and Instagram! @ReadyOrNotSuitcase
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CoNNeCTioNS The Newsletter Of Music For People features Earbone and Improvisation
The idea that sound goes on forever, and that any sound we make is in the universe forever, is something to deeply consider in these controversial times.
I was born in Switzerland and came to the US at age 4. I was sent to a nursery school where all the children were communicating with each other in strange sounds that I had never heard.
-
MUSIC CHANGES EVERYTHING at The Global Village Project
Published by Alternate ROOTS Online Journal. The first bone to develop in a baby is the Earbone. The last sense we lose before passing from this life is the sense of sound. Babies are born with all sounds, and to learn the language spoken around them, they eliminate the sounds they don’t need. … Read More …
-
Pass It On | Singing Hands : A Vocal and Percussion Residency
Oct 29, 2001 | by Elise Witt & the Children’s Music Network
-
Pass It On | Multiple Languages, Multiple Learning Styles
Dec 29, 1999 | by Children’s Music Network
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CODING IN MUSIC: ELISE WITT TEACHES HOW CODES CAN HELP MAKE MUSIC
“It’s important to know that it is not necessary for a musician to be able to read music to make music,” says Ms. Elise, Artist-in-Residence. “Many musicians learn and create music by ear. Written music is just a code, a language for musicians to communicate with each other.”
-
Ready or Not: A Community Art Project
Elise Witt’s “Ready or Not” imagines our human journeys, through the image of packing a magic suitcase. Join our #ReadyorNotSuitcase Community Art Project on Facebook and Instagram! @ReadyOrNotSuitcase
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Elise’s GVP STUDENTS WRITE, CREATE, REMIX NEW MUSIC IN SONGWRITERS’ CLUB
How do we deal with the many feelings we experience while stuck at home and living through a pandemic? For some GVP students, the answer is through songwriting. A new student-led Songwriters’ Club has flourished at GVP as a unique space for students to explore composing their own songs and remixing others’. Students meet weekly via Zoom to workshop original lyrics and share their latest creations with peers. They swap techniques for using GarageBand, a digital music creation studio available on their iPads. And the finished products are impressive: as STEAM Coordinator Danielle Ereddia says, “It’s not only that students are writing lyrics, they’re writing melodies and using loops, voice filters, and instruments on GarageBand to construct multi-layered songs…with up to 14 different tracks on one song.”
-
JENNY JENKINS
Traditional folk song with new verses by Elise Witt
-
-
Night Blooming Jasmine with Spark Chorus
by Elise Witt
© Non Si Sa Mai Music ASCAP
sung by Springdale Park Elementary Spark
Atlanta GA ~ Directed by Brianne Turgeon -
Pass It On! the journal of the Children’s Music Network features Elise with Good Vibrations
In music, a tuning fork is a classic vibratory instrument providing true pitch, used as a guide to all other tonal relationships. In life, it is Elise Witt.
Born in Switzerland to survivors of Nazi Germany, raised in North Carolina, Elise makes her home in Atlanta, Georgia. Speaking fluent Italian, French, German, Spanish, and English and singing in more than a dozen languages, Elise’s passion for music and language has carried her around the nation and across the seas. “My work and my life are all about sound,” says the multi-instrumentalist and longtime member of the Children’s Music Network.
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The Children’s Music Network revisits Thank You
From the Archives at The Children’s Music Network: Thank You by Elise Witt. “Thank You” was written during a residency at Garden Hills Elementary School in Atlanta GA. My students spoke 40 different languages among them, and we all shared the way our culture says “thank you.”
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MUSIC CHANGES EVERYTHING at The Global Village Project
Published by Alternate ROOTS Online Journal. The first bone to develop in a baby is the Earbone. The last sense we lose before passing from this life is the sense of sound. Babies are born with all sounds, and to learn the language spoken around them, they eliminate the sounds they don’t need. … Read More …
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Atlanta Journal Constitution | From War to Warmth : Refugee Teens Find a Haven and Hope at Global Village School
Mar 14, 2010 | by Maureen Downey
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Keeping Your Witts About You
Dec 20, 1997 | by Asa Tapley