DeMello students tune into their voices

For 20 weeks, fourth graders at DeMello Elementary School prepared to perform what would be for many of them the first concert performance of their lives. 

“My idea for these concerts is that they’re part informant and part performance,” said Monique Cellemme, DeMello’s music teacher.

The weeks of practice came together on Thursday, Jan. 17 as the fourth graders sang for friends and family from the stage in Dartmouth Middle School’s auditorium.

The first two songs the kids sang were folk songs that they used to practice singing in tune or playing a rhythm along with singing, Cellemme said, adding that they were the less “polished, shiny performance” and instead more focused on learning the skills.

The kids also sang songs more familiar to them, such as “Here Comes the Sun” and “Dynamite” by the K-pop group BTS, to learn how to have stage presence and expression, she added.

Students begin the school year with little music experience, leaving Cellemme with the challenge of preparing them for the concert while also following the rest of the class’ curriculum.

And while Cellemme taught most of the students in third grade and had an idea of their capabilities, she still needed to determine their “aptitude and the experience in the class.”

“There’s a little bit of trial and error,” she added. “It’s kind of like seeing what they can do, seeing how far you can push them.”

Closer to concert time, the students go from having one 40-minute class a week to three or four additional hour-long rehearsals where everything they worked on starts to come together.

“Maybe I shouldn’t say this because it’ll jinx it, but every concert, there’s always a point where I’m a little bit worried, like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if it’s going to come together,’ and it always does because they really rise to the occasion,” Cellemme said.

While kids are learning how to sing and perform, Cellemme said there is more to it than that.

“I think it’s important for them, too, for their self-confidence and their growth to see that they really can do something that maybe a month ago they couldn’t quite do and now they can feel confident presenting,” she said.

Next week, the kids will get recorders, which they’ll learn to play for the rest of the school year, which they are excited for.

“They keep asking me when they’re getting them,” Cellemme said. “I’m like, ‘After the concert, can we just do the concert first?’”

In fifth grade, the students will have a spring concert where they will both sing and play the recorder. They will then have the choice in middle school to either be in chorus, orchestra, band or choose to continue in a general music class.

“We want to give all these kids a performing experience, even if they don’t want to continue it in middle school, so that they have an idea of what it’s like to be in an ensemble and be on stage and present something that they worked on,” Cellemme said.