Inspired by Aesthetic Education, Fuzhou Campus Chorus Industry Flourished

Set up Fuzhou Little Jasmine Chorus to improve the singing level of children in Fuzhou; The first batch of 11 chorus aesthetic education demonstration schools and 18 base schools were selected and recognized throughout the city, and 3 million yuan of special funds were allocated for the development of chorus featured projects; Combining music art with Fuzhou dialect, gradually promoting the inheritance and innovation of Mindu culture by singing...... In recent years, the Municipal Education Bureau has focused on creating chorus art as a distinctive brand of Fuzhou aesthetic education, stimulating students' aesthetic interest and artistic accomplishment, and benefiting urban and rural students. Fuzhou campus chorus art has initially established a systematic development model, and its artistic level has improved year by year, He has won many awards in various competitions at all levels.

"You are a distant road, waiting in the mountain fog; I am a child, walking in your eyes..." Recently, a special concert was held to celebrate the 39th Teachers' Day and the 15th anniversary of the founding of Fuzhou Teachers' Choir. Accompanied by the gentle and melodious melody, the members of Fuzhou Teachers' Chorus sang "As Wish" affectionately, demonstrating the teachers' style and talent.

Founded in 2008, Fuzhou Teachers' Chorus consists of more than 70 teachers who love music and chorus in the city's education system. After years of development, the choir has cultivated a large number of excellent music teachers and become the "cradle" of the campus choir.

Today, the number and quality of campus choirs in Fuzhou are constantly improving. Choral art is one of the most popular and widely participated forms of artistic expression. In recent years, the Municipal Education Bureau has focused on creating choral art as a distinctive brand of Fuzhou aesthetic education. Up to now, Fuzhou campus chorus art has initially constructed a systematic development model, and its artistic level has been improved year by year. It has won many awards in various competitions at all levels. Campus chorus art has become a shining star in Fuzhou aesthetic education.

Repeatedly win awards

They sing the voice of Fuzhou on the big stage

On the evening of August 25, the Taiwan Strait Culture and Arts Center was full. On this night, the Fuzhou Little Jasmine Chorus presented 20 chorus works that combined ancient and modern Chinese and foreign styles and highlighted the national style, which shocked the audience.

The whole concert takes the vigorous growth of jasmine seeds as the main line, implying the positive and optimistic attitude of the members of the Little Jasmine Chorus who love life, love singing, and live in the sun. The concert repertoire is a collection of classical works from the Baroque period to the modern Chinese and foreign music world, with different styles and forms. There are popular songs, profound classical works, melodious folk songs and ballads, as well as passionate jazz music, all of which satisfy the audience.

In July 2000, with the goal of improving the level of children's chorus in Fuzhou and cultivating children's vocal talents, Fuzhou Little Jasmine Chorus was established. After 23 years, Fuzhou Jasmine has become an important cultural and educational brand in Fuzhou.

"We invite music teachers from primary and secondary schools to form a volunteer team as instructors, and each year we will launch a number of high-quality chorus works." Chorus teacher Liao said that the choir has greatly improved the children's stage experience, played their performance talents, and let them get artistic influence.

Featuring a fresh and natural style of children's chorus, Fuzhou Little Jasmine Chorus has not only excavated and trained a large number of children's art talents, but also made remarkable achievements on the stage of the country and even the world - invited to participate in the Vienna Golden Hall Concert on the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Germany, and won the "Fourth World Chorus Competition" and "Little Bailing Award" first It has become a fragrant and beautiful children's chorus flower blooming in the domestic and foreign music art gardens with honors such as the gold medal of the National Art Festival for Primary and Middle School Students.

In recent years, in order to promote the reform and development of the choral art in Fuzhou's primary and secondary schools, the Municipal Education Bureau has carried out the selection and identification of primary and secondary school choral model schools and base schools throughout the city, determined the first batch of 11 choral aesthetic education model schools and 18 base schools, and allocated a special cost of 3 million yuan to support the development of choral characteristic projects in the model schools and base schools.

Today, in the context of the city's efforts to strengthen the cultivation of aesthetic education, more and more campus choirs have gone from Fuzhou to the whole country and even the world, singing the voice of Fuzhou on a larger stage.

The Yuying Chorus of Fuzhou No. 16 Middle School, founded in 2014, is well-known. In addition to the two instructors of the school, the choir also hired experts from inside and outside the province to serve as external instructors. "The choir selects its members from three grades in the school, with the original intention of providing students with a platform to cultivate and display their hobbies and talents, rehearses through the combination of in class and extracurricular activities, and takes the difficult seven voice children's chorus as its own feature." Liu Chunjin, vice principal of the 16th Middle School, introduced that since its establishment, the Yuying Choir has won the gold medal in the 7th National Arts Festival for Primary and Middle School Students Honors at all levels, including the First Class Choir of the 15th China International Chorus Festival (Gold Award), the 8th Cross Strait Youth Festival Choir Gold Award.

Yuying Chorus has won many honors, but more importantly, under the background of "double reduction", the choir has provided a platform for these music loving students to cultivate and display their talents. "The choir has enhanced children's love of music and their confidence in life and learning," Liu Chunjin said.

Gao Jing, a member of the choir, is one of them. When he first joined the League, because he did not arrange time properly and master learning methods, Gao Jing's academic performance was unstable, and both parents and children had plans to leave the League. After understanding the situation, the teacher patiently analyzed the reasons and encouraged Gao Jing to continue to join the choir. "Later, the children regained their confidence by participating in the competition. During the training, other members helped Gao Jing with her homework. Everyone helped each other to improve their performance." Liu Chunjin said that participating in the choir made many children feel the power of aesthetic education. They were more active in their studies and could bear hardships and stand hard work. In this year's middle school entrance exam, almost all members of the choir in the third day of the junior high school were admitted to standard schools.

Fuzhou 11th Middle School Bamboo Choir, the first Communist Youth League member choir in Fuzhou, broke into the public's view with its outstanding performance. Xu Zhenying, the conductor of the choir, told the reporter that the choir, which had been established for only five years, won the gold medal of the municipal competition and the silver medal of the provincial competition in the 14th Fujian Music and Dance Festival in 2020 with its works "Dragon Boat Race" and "Chile Song", and won the first level team (gold medal) of the 16th China International Choral Festival in 2022. "More importantly, a group of children with basic skills have been given the opportunity to perform, and they are more confident than before," said Xu Zhenying.

"In the recently concluded Chinese Music Little Golden Bell Children's Chorus Performance, the 16th China International Chorus Festival and the 8th China Children's Chorus Festival, many primary and secondary school choirs in Fuzhou have won 18 awards for their solid choral skills and wonderful artistic performance, including 9 gold medals and 6 silver medals." The relevant person in charge of the municipal education bureau said, In the past two years, more than 60 choral works in the city have won the national and provincial competition awards, and the Municipal Education Bureau has been rated as the excellent organization unit of national primary and middle school students' art performances by the Ministry of Education.

Continuous breakthroughs

They have more opportunities and stages

A single branch is not spring. A hundred flowers bloom in spring. As the most widely participated form of artistic expression, chorus should not only be exclusive to urban children, but should be enjoyed by more children. In order to present the good situation of "letting a hundred flowers blossom", the Municipal Education Bureau carries out the activity of "singing in classes" every year throughout the city, with nearly 100% of the participants, encouraging primary and secondary school students in the city to participate in the chorus and sing a beautiful life through wonderful songs. Such a move has inspired many children in the mountains by singing. The Little Plum Choir of Minqing No. 3 Experimental Primary School is the beneficiary.

"It's not easy for them to go from zero to the first prize of this year's Little Jasmine Chorus Festival." Principal Huang Feixue recalled the way of the choir's advancement and sighed with emotion.

The Third Experimental Primary School of Minqing County is located in the urban and rural junction of Minqing County. "Many children come from remote mountain villages around." Huang Feixue said that although the education level is constantly improving, many children have not had real music lessons. What is more difficult is that the education concept in rural areas is relatively old. Parents are worried that singing will affect their children's learning, and they have raised objections. In order to enable children to fully receive aesthetic education, school teachers send children home one by one after training, and use their spare time to give them remedial lessons.

The choir does not charge students any fees, and the school has invited many professional choir teachers and teams. Slowly, from the most basic notes to exhalation, from body to movement, the children's intonation is better, the sound quality is more beautiful, and the movement is more coordinated

Why is it so difficult to insist that children join the choir? In Huang Feixue's opinion, teaching children to sing is not to make them become musicians, but to hope that they can have greater opportunities and stages, and have more artistic perception of life. "It's not just about how well they sing, we need to see how music can change their minds and careers, which is the direction that aesthetic education should focus on."

At the same time, Minqing County has also set up a teacher choir. Through the radiation of teachers, children's music literacy has been greatly improved, and their performance in the competition is getting better and better.

In recent years, Fuzhou has continued to promote art education in areas with weak foundations: the Mawei District Education Bureau's Chuanshao Chorus Troupe started from scratch and won the first prize of the Little Jasmine Chorus Festival after hard training; The High tech Zone Experimental Middle School cooperated with Fuzhou Art School to create a chorus teaching alliance, which broke the zero breakthrough of the High tech Zone School in the chorus competition award, and won the first prize of the Little Jasmine Chorus Festival... Music is entering the hearts of more and more children.

Inherit the culture of Fujian Capital

They explore the way of diversified aesthetic education

With the choir becoming the bright name card of each school, how can we take the chorus art as the fulcrum to create an innovative way of educating people?

It is a new exploration being carried out by Jin'an Rongbo Primary School to combine music art with Fuzhou dialect and gradually promote the inheritance and innovation of Mindu culture by singing. The school choir won the first prize at the fifth Little Jasmine Chorus Festival in Fuzhou with a Fuzhou language song "Autumn".

"After joining the choir, I can slowly have some simple conversations in Fuzhou dialect," Luo Yutong, a native of New Fuzhou and a student of Rongbo Primary School, said happily.

Rongbo Primary School is a talent themed primary school with many introduced talent children. Lin Lulu, a choir teacher at Rongbo Primary School, said: "Dialect is a carrier of culture and a bridge of communication. Most students follow their parents to Fuzhou, the 'second hometown', to study and live. Learning Fuzhou dialect through singing can not only enhance students' recognition of Fujian's culture and language, but also help them better integrate into Fuzhou."

"We build a platform for students to create performance opportunities and online platform appearances to enhance children's confidence," said He Liuqing, head of the "Youyou Lu" choir of Fuzhou Qunzhong Road Primary School.

On the new platform of exploration, Qunzhong Road Primary School has made continuous actions. On Teachers' Day in September 2020, the original song "Together with You" launched by the school was selected as a special plan for Teachers' Day by the client of People's Daily, and gained attention nationwide; In June 2021, at the invitation of Xinhuanet, Qunzhong Road Primary School created the original MV "Come with Me" as a song to celebrate the centennial of the Party's birthday on the Children's Day of June 1, 2021, which was reprinted by dozens of major party media nationwide, with more than 100000 readings per hour.

He Liuqing said that let students "sing the leading role", use songs in the form of children's perspective, language and passion to stimulate ideological resonance, call for value recognition, and have more affinity and appeal.

Music has brought confidence to rural children, and children have also brought people the voice of the mountains. Songkou Rural Children's Choir used an original song Songkou Ballad to stand in the concert hall of Shanghai Gorge Culture and Art Center and describe the beautiful scenery of Songkou Ancient Town in Yongtai, making music "nostalgia" and "hometown singing".

"Music, as a kind of culture, has great potential to empower rural revitalization." Lin Haibei, a music teacher at Songkou Central Primary School, said that he would show more new achievements and stories of rural construction through music.

In order to support schools to explore the diversification of aesthetic education, the Municipal Education Bureau has taken out "real gold and silver" to support schools. Fuzhou issued the "Management Measures for Special Funds for School Aesthetic Education and Sports in Fuzhou" to subsidize chorus featured projects from three aspects: routine, competition and reward, support the construction and development of school chorus projects, and constantly improve the level of chorus in primary and secondary schools in Fuzhou.

"We will build a broader platform for aesthetic education practice for young people in the city from point to area, and stimulate students' aesthetic interest and artistic accomplishment." The relevant person in charge of the municipal education bureau said that Fuzhou is making strides in the innovation of aesthetic education practice, hoping that more and more children will have more life possibilities through aesthetic education. (Reporter Lin Han, Tang Weiqiang, intern Xu Jiarui)