SONGS & MUSIC:

Moray Steiner School Celebrates 21 Years

The Moray Steiner School sits in a stately old house surrounded by beautiful gardens on the top of a hill overlooking the town of Forres in the northeast of Scotland. It has magnificent views over the Moray Firth to the far hills of the north. The school offers a vibrant education based on the philosophies of Rudolf Steiner. It started 21 years ago within the Findhorn Foundation, in The Family House at The Park, with one class and has grown into a vibrant community of 138 students and a band of inspired and dedicated teachers. It now exists independent of its parent body and offers a high standard of teaching from parent and toddler up to age 16. It is gaining a reputation amongst the Steiner fellowship as a fine school and I believe that, owing to its relationship with the Foundation, it will always have something special, something extra.

I have been involved in the school in one way or another for 20 years, as a teacher of dance and drama, as a parent for 13 years and, two years ago, I started teaching music to the upper classes. I have been in the privileged position of being involved musically with several generations of students — some of whom have left to pursue musical careers. We also have some highly talented performers amongst the parent teacher body. In fact the School community overflows with music.

During our 21st birthday celebration, listening to my son Liam and his friend Gulli, who were in school together from age 3 to 16, singing and playing guitar so exquisitely, the whole idea came to me in a flash to make a CD of music that celebrates all these diverse talents and marks our first 21 years. As a small private school we do not have funds for musical education and I thought we could sell the CD to raise money to buy instruments. I have my sights set on a bass recorder and a set of African drums for starters!

The whole thing came together in two months, from conception to sales, as I gathered music that had already been recorded and was very generously donated by parents and past pupils. And the response has been that it is not 'just a school CD' but has music of great power and inspiration from sacred to blues, klezmer Jazz to Greek folk, sacred Korean church music to David Bowie. This variety reflects the diverse creative inspirations of our community.

Great care was taken by school parent Alvin Kramer to craft all the donated tracks into a seamless listening experience. It is hard to single out any tracks for special mention as the whole is of such quality — but what springs to mind as special are the angelic songs of music teacher Sheila Pettitt. When Sheila sings, it feels to me as if she opens a door to the heavens and lets her listeners through. Hard on her heels comes young Iona Leigh, daughter of Findhorn Flower Essences Marion Leigh, whose song Ocean, also opens up pathways of spirit. But if that is not your taste, there is the earthiness of blues classic Mean Mistreater by class 6/7 teacher Krzysz — or Gulli and Liam's inspired rendering of Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World or Rory O'Connell's soaring clarinet on Blessing Nigun which takes you to heaven by a different route! A soulful route!

To add the icing on the cake, the cover has been designed by School parent John Byrne. John is an internationally renowned artist. He designed record covers for The Beatles and Billy Connolly and is well known for writing, directing and designing stage and screen presentations of The Slab Boys (1978) and Tutti Frutti (1987), recently revived in Aberdeen. His work is held in major collections in Scotland and abroad. Several of his paintings hang in The Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.

To-date we have made £700 for musical projects at the school. I am excitedly looking in instrument catalogues and dreaming up future recording projects and see this as part of my plan to build up the music department in the school. I aim to introduce the children to a very practical music curriculum and to foster the skills that help them to join in with creative music ensembles...and most of all, to keep music alive in all its forms....without it, our world would be a pretty dry old place!

Kate O'Connell
Findhorn 2007

Sample tracks for you to listen to:

1. Ocean © 2006 Iona Leigh
2. Ring of Brodgar © 2005 Sheila Pettitt
3. Smile © 2005 Jenna Hill and Nigel Frayling-Kelly


To Order Copies of the CD
Please send £12 per copy (plus £1 p and p GB or £2.50 ROW) to:

Kate O'Connell
Moray Steiner School
Drumduan House
Clovenside Rd
Forres, Scotland IV36 2RD

Make cheques payable to:
The Moray Steiner School

To Support Musical Education at the School
Send cheques payable to 'The Moray Steiner School' to the above address or contact Kate at kate@hollyoconnell.freeserve.co.uk

To find out more about singer/songwriter Iona Leigh, visit:
www.iona.tv