2021-2022 Workshops
For this upcoming year, we will be hosting three workshops. At this time we are assuming that the workshops will be held virtually. However, we will reassess if it becomes safe and feasible to hold workshops in-person. Details for each workshop will be announced prior to the event. There will not be a subscription membership this year. For updates, please follow us on social media, sign up for our mailing list, and check out our website. We are here to support you!
You can also use your Carl Orff Canada Membership, to access workshops (at member pricing) hosted by Orff Chapters across Canada.
You can also use your Carl Orff Canada Membership, to access workshops (at member pricing) hosted by Orff Chapters across Canada.
September 18, 2021
10 AM - 12 PM MST
Jewel Casselman: Music Activities for Primary Grades
January 22, 2022
10 AM - 12 PM MST
Brent Holl: The Sweet Sound of Harmony
March 12, 2022
10 AM - 12 PM MST
Drue Bullington: Keep Creating and Carry On
10 AM - 12 PM MST
Jewel Casselman: Music Activities for Primary Grades
January 22, 2022
10 AM - 12 PM MST
Brent Holl: The Sweet Sound of Harmony
March 12, 2022
10 AM - 12 PM MST
Drue Bullington: Keep Creating and Carry On
Calgary Workshops
Keep Creating and Carry On!
with Drue Bullington March 12, 2022 10 AM - 12 PM MST Mindful moments to begin, a mixed meter exploration from OS MFC Vol. IV will bring a bit of musical challenge to the experience, and offer a path for mixed meter improvisation and composition. We’ll bring in personal experience with the night sky, and edge into moon phase hand drumming and building blocks, a beautiful Emily Dickinson poem will inspire us, and we’ll end our time together with a musical look at the artwork of Kandinsky. |
Music Activities for Primary Grades
with Jewel Casselman September 18, 2021 10 am - 12 pm (MST) Building the foundations for learning in the elementary classroom is important for life long learning in music. This workshop will focus on fun activities, games, and songs for early primary grades (K-3). Come prepared to play, create, sing, and move as we learn routines, rhythms, reading, writing, and listening activities to build your student’s early musical learning in a fun and engaging way. |
The Sweet Sound of Harmony
with Brent Holl January 22, 2022 10 am - 12 pm (MST) In this session we’ll celebrate the timbres of the Orff instruments as we look at their justification and use in the music classroom. We will analyze and listen to arrangements and explore improvisations and tapestries of sound that display the beautiful sound colors of the Orff orchestra. We’ll talk, sing, play, and listen. What are the joys of Orff Schulwerk? The magical sounds of the instruments, the fun of body percussion, games, speech pieces, movement, songs, stories… All of the above? Yes! Focus: Orff process, timbre, movement, improvisation. Audience: Teachers K-8 |
Other Chapter's Workshops
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
Find a list of workshops here: www.orffcanada.ca/chapter.html
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.
Looking for More?
Carl Orff Canada’s new Mentorship Program* offers additional support to educators who have engaged in Orff training, and assists them in linking the pedagogy of the Orff process with the realities of individual teaching situations. Educators experienced in the Orff process will partner with a teacher who is new to the Orff process to co-create an individualized mentorship program, meeting the mentee’s needs in developing their practice, deepening their understanding of Orff pedagogy, refining their artistic intentions and developing their teaching style and profile. Direct and consistent communication will occur between mentor and mentee, using a wide variety of platforms (including online and face-to-face).
If this sounds like something that you’ve been looking for, please go to the COC website, Members Only, P & P, Section R for more information, including an application form, or contact Liz Kristjanson, Mentorship Committee, Chair at past-president@orffcanada.ca. *The new Mentorship Program is not to be confused with the Levels Course Instructor Internship Program, formerly known as the Mentorship Program. |
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.