So, our district contacts with the local professional symphony orchestra arranged for some their players to come help with our big Baroque concert coming up. The players get paid through the orchestra's outreach/educational program, so it isn't costing us a dime. Today they sent a gaggle of string players to my orchestra class to work with the kids. I can't tell you how awesome it was. Well... actually I can... IT WAS FRIGGIN AWESOME!
At the beginning of the class, I did a little bit of a run through of one of the concert pieces, then I let the pro players take over. They broke the kids up into sectional groups by instrument. The beautiful part about it is that they all had a lot of experience working with kids already; one had even been a school orchestra director for 15 years. For the rest of the hour, I just walked around and took pictures of our kids getting coaching from professional orchestral musicians.
This felt like one of the best one of the best things I've ever done... reaching out to the music community....to people living at the other end of the music education process, and making a contact that seemed to validate everything I've been trying to do.
I need to do stuff like this more often.
2 comments:
That sounds amazing. What a great experience for those students! Is that something that happens often in your area?
the orchestra has a number of educational programs, but I don't know how often they are utilized. We're lucky to get them, since our program is so small (and serves an affluent neighborhood. Sometimes these organizations don't reach out as much to rich kids... the PR isn't as good.)
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