I love doing listening projects in my studio classes. These leveled, small-group, hour-long classes are offered 5-6 times per year, with 3-5 students per group. I always include a performance element and plan several themed activities spanning technique, sight-reading, rhythm, improvisation and composition, and listening.

In a recent class with three intermediate students (8th-11th grade), we compared the music of Franz Schubert and Max Richter.

It starts simply. Two blocked jazz chords with I-V in the bass. And then the vocalist comes in:

“Twenty-four hours can go so fast.
You look around, the day has passed…”

This is Leonard Bernstein’s song “Some Other Time” with lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, written for the 1944 musical, On the Town. It’s about three sailors on 24-hour leave in New York City who meet three women before leaving for war. Four characters perform this song (in the stage version), hoping to catch up some other time, but knowing they may never see each other again.