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Carol Boyd Leon - News & Reviews

May 1, 2004 - This Music is Meant for Singing

From Washington Jewish Week:

This Music is Meant for Singing

by Aaron Leibel
Arts Editor

Carol Boyd Leon says her music is not meant just for listening.

The strength of my music is that I write singable, memorable melodies, which people of all ages enjoy, says the Burke resident, whose songbook and CD, Gan Shirim, A Garden of Songs for Schools and Families (arrangements and accompaniments by CD co-producer Adrian A. Durlester) will be published by KTAV Publishing House next month.

If my songs are sung at worship services, the entire congregation can sing along. That encourages more participation in worship services, she says. When I write children's music, I gear it to their singing ability. My children's songs are in a limited vocal range, have age-approriate lyrics and catchy melodies.

Leon began her career as a music teacher and composer almost by accident.

Teaching music crept up on me, she says.

A member of Beth El Hebrew Congregation in Alexandria, she says she always has enjoyed music and singing. As a child in elementary school, she wanted to be a teacher, but as I got older, I changed direction and didn't go into teaching.

Some friends who had attended her children's musical birthday parties suggested she start teaching music to preschool kids. In 1991, Leon began teaching music in a Music and Me class at Congregation Olam Tikvah preschool in Fairfax.

From that modest beginning, she has become very active in the music teaching profession. She is music specialist at the Gesher Jewish Day School in Fairfax; Beth El Hebrew Congregation Religious School; Olam Tikvah Preschool; Beth Emeth Early Childhood Center in Herndon; and Keshet Child Development Center in Alexandria.

She also is founding musical director of the Olam Tikvah Chorale; Kol NoVa Community Youth Choir in Fairfax; Harmoniyah of Gesher Jewish Day School; and Beth El Hebrew Congregation Youth Choir.

And Leon is cantorial soloist at Greenspring Village in Springfield and Tot Shabbat leader at Beth El Hebrew Congregation and Congregation B'nai Tzedek in Potomac.

In her spare time, she founded and teaches each summer at the Encore Summer Performance Camp and the Music & More Summer Camp in Burke.

It wasn't ending up a teacher that surprised Leon. Becoming a composer was unforeseen.

I always thought that people were born song writers, she says. I didn't know that one could simply write music.

For the past eight years, that is what she has been doing, writing more than 100 songs.

Her first effort, The Ladybug Counting Song, followed a purchase of ladybug finger puppets to use in her Music and Me classes.

I needed a song to teach with, but not finding one, decided to try to write one myself, she says.

A couple of years later, inspired by songwriters she had met online, she turned her talents to writing Jewish music.

Since then, The Ladybug Counting Song has morphed into a Jewish song (One little ladybug ahat [one in Hebrew] on a tree, red wings, black spots, you can see).

The music teacher-composer started off on a completely different track. She was born in Oceanside, N.Y., in 1954, but grew up in Baldwin, N.Y. Although her parents were members of a Conservative synagogue, she neither attended Hebrew school nor had a bat mitzvah ceremony, a lack she has remedied as an adult.

After graduating from Brown University in 1977 with a degree in economics, Leon worked for the Bureau of Labor Statistics until 1985. She then did some freelance writing from home, where she was raising her children. Only when they were more grown did she start her music career.

In addition to Gan Shirim, the composer, who has her own Web site (www.carolboydleon.com) has published Jewish Life Cycle (2002) and Songs from the Heart: Family Shabbat, with CD (2000).

Gan Shirim is pitched specifically for preschool through elementary school kids, but Leon believes the whole family will find itself singing along to virtually every song.

She notes that there are snippets of humor, which may appeal to adults, such as I'm All Shook Up, a song about a lulav sung in 1950s rock 'n roll style.

The CD and songbook are sold separately. The CD, with 70 songs, will not contain printed lyrics. So if people want to sing along, the songbook would be helpful, she says.

The songbook has big-print lyrics as well as sheet music including melody and chords for every song. There also are teaching suggestions and a page of information about the topic or holiday for which each song is appropriate.

For the ladybug counting song, for example, the numbers are printed in Hebrew, feminine and masculine, with transliterations. There's also an explanation of the origin of the Hebrew word for ladybug.

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