There was no need for any sibling rivalry when 10-year-old Chloe Dockendorff and her eight-year-old brother Seth competed in a national competition for student composers recently.
In fact, there were plenty of awards to go around at the Canadian Federation of Music Teachers' Association's Canada Music Week competition for the two talented children of Scott and Faith Dockendorff of Morell.
Chloe aced first place in the 11-and-under category for her solo piano piece, March of the Penguins, and Seth placed first in the eight-and-under category for his vocal solo, The Wind is a Ninja.
This comes on the heels of Chloe's first win in 2010 for her cute little tune, Why Can't a Penguin Fly?, which The Guardian detailed with a story and a video of her lively performance.
"At the time when I wrote it, (Seth) was and still is a penguin-aholic. I had written the Why Can't a Penguin Fly song and my mom said, ‘Why don't you write a piano piece (for the 2011 competition)?'" remembers Chloe.
"I sat down at the piano and I started messing around and eventually I came up with (my new March of the Penguins piece)."
Chloe set her song in the cold, dark Antarctic landscape where penguins reign.
"It's barren and there's nothing there - there is a section of music all about that - and then eventually one little penguin marches out from behind an iceberg and he is followed by a whole little colony of penguins and they march up and down the little landscape," she says.
"And then they come to the water's edge and they're going to dive in. I don't know if you've ever seen penguins dive into the water, they're like (swoop, swoop, swoop) and so you can hear that in the music."
After their harmonic swim, the penguins march back to the beginning again.
"Just as the song is about to end, one little penguin - the very first little penguin - pops his head around from the edge of the iceberg and that's where the song ends," explains Chloe, who loves to tell actual stories through her music.
"I base a lot of my piano pieces on stories because it's fun to do and it sounds cool once it's done," she laughs.
When it comes to voice lessons, Chloe is in her fourth year with instructor Suzanne Campbell; it is Seth's first. Both children are home-schooled by their mother, who majored in music at UPEI. They also have a bevy of extracurricular activities, such as piano, skating and swimming.
In addition to penguins, karate classes are definitely on Seth's keener list, as are ninjas, which inspired his The Wind is a Ninja song.
"Basically I was swinging outside on the swing, it was windy and I got this song in my head. Then I sang it to Mommy and she made me write it down," he remembers.
"It's about the wind being a ninja; basically that's all."
"It's pretty short," his mother adds with a smile.
This short but sweet ditty earned Seth first place in the eight-and-under solo vocal category both for the local P.E.I. Registered Music Teachers' Association competition and the national association's Canada Music Week competition.
Chloe placed first in the 11-and-under category for her solo piano piece, both provincially and nationally as well.
After winning her first major award in 2010, Chloe had a busy 2011.
As an encore to her 2010 win, she was invited to sing Why Can't a Penguin Fly? at the Canada Music Week convention in Regina, Sask.
She was also one of the children of Avonlea in the production of Anne of Green Gables for two days a week during the summer.
She rounded off that season by singing at the annual Maud Whitmore concert.
"At the Maud Whitmore, I was a little nervous because there were thousands and thousands of people out there (in the audience)," she says, breaking into her winsome dimpled smile.
"But I find I get more nervous before a show then when I'm actually doing them. Things always seem worse before you do them."
She also landed a role as one of the Von Trapp children in the recent Confederation Centre of the Arts' Sound of Music production.
For the upcoming 2012 Music Teachers Federation competition, Seth has composed The Karate Song and Chloe is writing a piano piece about Egypt.
Their mother says her children's musical success is all a matter of having the freedom to explore their musical nature.
"I think it's that they have time because the schooling doesn't take quite as long (as a typical in-school day), so they have time to go to the piano and just mess around," Dockendorff says.
"And because I'm around them more, I catch them doing things. Frequently they'll be at the piano and . . . every now and then I'll say, ‘That's really good let's write that down.'
"Chloe's Why Can't a Penguin Fly and Seth's The Wind is a Ninja were really just grabbing at the moment because they (and I will) forget it the next day. It's gone unless you get it down."
