2023-2024 Workshops
Stay tuned for updates on future workshops!
What is the Calgary Orff Chapter?
The Calgary Orff Chapter is a chapter of Carl Orff Canada and is dedicated to providing high quality professional development opportunities for music teachers. Through our workshops and courses we aim to help improve the quality of music education in both Calgary and the surrounding areas.
Land Acknowledgement
Our Elders have taught us the importance of acknowledging the land that we gather on. The land sustains us, guides us, and brings inspiration. To members of the Calgary Orff Chapter, the land represents the spaces where we can gather together to make music and land that gives us the materials to create instruments. We are fortunate to live and play in an area that gives us beautiful and inspiring landscapes of strong mountains, rushing rivers, and bird songs.
The Calgary Orff Chapter acknowledges that Moh’kinsstis (Calgary) is the traditional territory of the Blackfoot Nations in the Treaty 7 Region of Southern Alberta, this includes the Siksika, the Piikani, the Kainai. We would also like to acknowledge the Stoney Nakoda and Tsuut’ina, as well as the Métis Nation of Alberta (Region 3). All people who live and work in the Treaty 7 region are treaty people.
Our Elders have taught us the importance of acknowledging the land that we gather on. The land sustains us, guides us, and brings inspiration. To members of the Calgary Orff Chapter, the land represents the spaces where we can gather together to make music and land that gives us the materials to create instruments. We are fortunate to live and play in an area that gives us beautiful and inspiring landscapes of strong mountains, rushing rivers, and bird songs.
The Calgary Orff Chapter acknowledges that Moh’kinsstis (Calgary) is the traditional territory of the Blackfoot Nations in the Treaty 7 Region of Southern Alberta, this includes the Siksika, the Piikani, the Kainai. We would also like to acknowledge the Stoney Nakoda and Tsuut’ina, as well as the Métis Nation of Alberta (Region 3). All people who live and work in the Treaty 7 region are treaty people.
Looking for More?
Using your Carl Orff Canada Membership, access workshops at member pricing hosted by Orff Chapters across Canada.
Find a list of workshops here: www.orffcanada.ca/chapter.html |
What is Orff Schulwerk?

Orff Schulwerk, an approach to music education developed by Carl Orff, is experiential and holistic and is for all types of learners, aural, visual and kinesthetic. In Orff Schulwerk, children learn in an active way, where imitation and exploration lead to improvisation and music literacy. Speech, song, movement and instruments are the vehicles used to teach rhythm, melody, form, harmony and timbre. Carl Orff defined the ideal music for children as “never music alone, but music connected with movement, dance, and speech – not to be [merely] listened to, meaningful only in active participation.”
Orff Schulwek is built on the idea that a child must be able to feel and make rhythms and melodies before being called on to read and write music. Orff believed that a child internalized and developed ownership of a concept by experiencing the concept before it is put into words. “Experience first, intellectualize second.” In the same way that a child learns to speak before learning to read and write, he or she must have a musical language in which to feel at home before technical knowledge is introduced.
Through pitched and non-pitched percussion instruments, movement, games, singing, and rhythmic exploration, the child learns of his own innate musical talents in a way that is immediately successful and rewarding.
Orff Schulwek is built on the idea that a child must be able to feel and make rhythms and melodies before being called on to read and write music. Orff believed that a child internalized and developed ownership of a concept by experiencing the concept before it is put into words. “Experience first, intellectualize second.” In the same way that a child learns to speak before learning to read and write, he or she must have a musical language in which to feel at home before technical knowledge is introduced.
Through pitched and non-pitched percussion instruments, movement, games, singing, and rhythmic exploration, the child learns of his own innate musical talents in a way that is immediately successful and rewarding.