Resources for Teachers and Students*
1. Visit the Student Resources page to find two quizzes that you can assign to your students. The quizzes are completed online and provide your students with immediate feedback.
2. Download the Marco Polo Teacher Resource. The guide provides teachers with a selection of classroom exercises related to the concert program.
This Concert Program is a creative re-imagining of the extraordinary music the 13th-century Venetian explorer might have heard on his travels.
The impetus for this new 50-minute education concert came from the
fact that students in Toronto today come from all around the world, and represent a wide range of cultures and musical backgrounds. The Consort wanted a way to connect early music with these other musical traditions. Marco Polo is a perfect vehicle, because he travelled so extensively through the middle East and southern Russia to China. This education concert follows Marco Polo’s travels, with an emphasis on the instruments and the singing style of the different cultures he might have encountered on his journey.
Students hear examples of Chinese musical styles and instruments and traditional Georgian music, which features incredible vocal gymnastics, including nimble counterpoint and strident dissonant chord tunings. Around these pieces from Georgia and China, the Toronto Consort plays examples of the lively dances and haunting laude (Italian spiritual songs) which would have been known by Marco Polo and his family.
The concert is followed by a Q & A with the artists.
*Student and Teacher Resources created by Laura Fitzpatrick