Whacky March From The Nutcracker

What a natural for Boomwhackers® and kazoos. We took the opening theme of the march from The Nutcracker and added a few touches to make it a better way to feature your young players and their Boomwhackers®. We also slowed the tempo down a little to make it more accessible for your kazoo virtuosos, and simplified the melody a bit. The strings play the whole thing, though.

The section at measure 19 is a question and answer with a "pile up" effect where you keep adding notes as each measure progresses. You could also do some interesting things visually with this. It would be a neat place to have some wooden soldier-style movement either for the kazoo players or everyone.

Note that the extracted Boomwhacker® part is in this magazine. The kazoo part is featured on the piano/vocal reduction and is extracted in the Student Reproducible Parts, available separately, optional.

To enrich the experience, share a recording or maybe even a video of the original Nutcracker music. It could even be a part of a longer unit on this ballet. Have the students listen to see what is different about the two arrangements. Have fun with it!