Orchestra in the classroom (OEC)
This course enables students to develop the professional competences required to manage an Orchestra in the classroom course (woodwind, brass, strings) rolled out in the canton of Geneva as part of the Department of public education’s ARTEX programme.
The 5 sessions in the 1st term deal with issues such as the status of partners and knowledge of the study plan in French-speaking Switzerland, and provide practical tools (basic technique of instruments, beginners’ repertoire, organising lessons and planning apprenticeships).
The participants will then be included, for a year, in two OECs (7P in the autumn term, 8P in the spring term) in the region, either as a manager (monitored by instructors), or as an intern.
Analyses of activity, in the form of videos or on-site visits, are organised in the 3rd term of the course.
Target audience and admission criteria
Professors from music schools in the canton, awarded (accredited) with a degree that is recognized for teaching and people with a teaching degree from a recognized music school.
The participant profile requires knowing how to play at least one of the instruments in the family that is the subject of the OEC lessons (woodwind / brass / strings).
The minimum number of participants is 8 and the maximum is 12.
Certification
End of course certificate providing authorisation to lead an OEC course at the state schools in the canton of Geneva.
Tutors
The HEM’s institutional tutors and local tutors under the responsibility of Carine Tripet, Adeline Melo, Rada Hadjikostova, Matthias Ernst and Fabrice Vernay.
Carine Tripet
The holder of a doctorate in Social and political sciences, in the field of Education sciences, Carine Tripet is a musician as well. With a musical background rooted in jazz, but specializing in vocal music from around the world, she is active in the Valais, where her musical projects are centred around immigration and the Valais’ cultural legacy. She won the Musique Pro Valais cultural bursary for the period 2014-2017 for a project entitled ViaVallesia.
Formerly a professor at the ‘Haute école pédagogique du Valais’, where she was in charge of several educational programmes, she also taught courses in Education sciences applied to music teaching for six years at the HEMU. The content of her courses is resolutely inter-disciplinary, gleaning material from all relevant sources (including, in no particular order: didactics, developmental psychology, neuroscience, ethics, and law) in order to create a solid network of concepts and notions enabling young professors to analyse their own practices. Her research is oriented towards building the professional identity of music professors, in conjunction with cultural democracy.
She has coordinated the pedagogy course at the ‘Haute école de musique de Genève’ since 2022.
Matthias Ernst
Matthias was born in Geneva in 1976, where he studied the clarinet from the age of 11 under Luc Fuchs at Geneva’s ‘Conservatoire Populaire de Musique’. He was awarded a Professional Clarinet Diploma in 2001, along with the Concert Diploma in 2003 in the class led by Thomas Friedli at Geneva’s ‘Conservatoire de Musique’.
Together with a violinist, a pianist and a bandoneonist, he founded the ‘Cuarteto Tango Indigo’ (Tango Indigo Quartet), which performs a repertoire of tangos, waltzes and milonga.
He was the solo clarinetist of the ‘Orchestre du Collège de Genève’ from 1994 to 1996, the year in which he became the first solo clarinetist in the ‘Orchestre Symphonique Genevois’ (OSG). He plays in numerous chamber music ensembles, in a range of formations playing contemporary music (‘Ensemble Contrechamps’) and jazz, and in 2018 he joined the OHge (‘Orchestre d’Harmonie de l’Etat de Genève’).
He has also worked as a clarinet professor at the ‘Conservatoire Populaire de Musique Danse et Théâtre’ in Geneva since 2002. Moreover, since 2014 he has been in charge of teaching the “Orchestra in the classroom, woodwind” course at the DIP.
Rada Radjikostova
The violinist Rada Hadjikostova holds a degree from the National Academy of Sofia. After playing and studying all over the world, including in the Chilean capital Santiago, Würzburg and Paris, she rounded off her academic pathway at the ‘Haute École de Musique de Genève’ by winning the Adolf Neumann prize for the best soloist diploma under M. Karafilova and the string post-graduate degree with G.Takács.
She has always had a passion for chamber music, and this passion has enabled her to work with the likes of N. Brainin, W. Levin, S. Devich and the Bartók, Debussy and Ysaÿe String Quartets. Fascinated by contemporary and experimental music, Rada co-founded the Vortex Ensemble in 2005, and she still plays in it today. She recently joined the eclectic Fecimeo ensemble.
She is a much-admired teacher of the violin and the orchestra in the classroom courses at the CPMDT.
Fabrice Vernay
Born in Massongex (VS), Fabrice Vernay started playing the drum, and then percussion more generally, in the local brass band. After graduating in Latin and English at St-Maurice College, he earned the teaching degree and the concert degree at Lausanne Conservatoire. Following a degree in educational sciences at Dijon University, he is currently studying for an MASPE at the Unil and HepVd.
He teaches percussion, music and educational sciences to groups and individuals at a range of scholarly and non-scholarly institutions, from the youngest pupils to the oldest, via adults in tertiary education. In the context of the development of best professional practices for music teachers, he regularly uses analysis of activity to encourage instinctive practices.
In parallel to his activity as a musician on a variety of stages, he directs the music school for the commune of Martigny. He has also held a variety of roles at the HEMU and the music school of Rolle and environs.
