orchestra21

This weekend the WCFSO Lollipops – our traveling, free concert series for toddlers and kids – celebrates thirty years of continuous performances. We’re marking the occassion with a special performance and all-day installation of our instrument petting zoo at the Waterloo Center for the Arts.

One of my deepest professional passions is bringing music to life for young people, so it has been a great honor and pleasure to provide Iowa kids with their earliest experiences of live music through my involvement in this invaluable community program. Now the feeling is personal as well: On Saturday my eighteen-month-old son Benjamin will be among the throng of excited kids helping the WCFSO kick off our next three decades of Lollipops.

[Image from a WCFSO performance for youth by Noah Henschied]

Iraqi Youth Orchestra
PRI The World – September 29, 2011

Transcendence through music making, in the form of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq. The ensemble – whose players are drawn from across the country’s ethnic and regional lines – is a rare model of productive cooperation in an otherwise deeply sectarian society. Hopefully the orchestra’s first performance abroad [at Beethovenfest Bonn] will direct attention and funding towards its ‘long-term goal to help restart a stable musical education system in Iraq.’

Great news for the WCFSO – we just received word of five-figure grants from the Community Foundation of Northeast Iowa and the Guernsey Charitable Foundation in support of our youth concerts, family programming and Buck-a-Kid outreach effort. Both grants are up significantly over previous years, proof that prioritizing our role as an educational resource for our community can pay dividends even in an uncertain economic climate. A huge thank you to both foundations for helping us pursue our ongoing goal of offering our very best work to young audiences across northern Iowa.

Even with all of the challenges facing symphonic organizations today in America I sense that few of us in the orchestra biz stateside have the remotest concept of the difficulties young Iraqi musicians deal with on a daily basis. This Kickstarter project, organized by the previously highlighted Open Goldberg Project, will help fund a unique summer youth orchestra program in Iraq and also document the lives and musical experiences of its participants.

I’ve always felt that the intensely collaborative aspect of orchestral culture is one of things that makes our art so valuable as an educational example for young people, but conductor Daniel Barenboim proves it can be even more powerful as a manifestation of equality and shared enterprise. And what better place in today’s world to demonstrate that idea than Gaza.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while you know that I try to share feedback from my concerts whenever I can, especially from young people. Below are the responses of one fifth grade class in Waterloo, Iowa to their experience hearing Beethoven 5 at last week’s WCFSO educational concerts:

• That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen
• I love Beethoven now that I heard his music
• The movements go with his feeling
• Some of the most beautiful music ever
• It sounded like it was fake, but it was not
• The music was absolutely unforgettable
• It sounded as if Beethoven was magic
• I will never forget the symphony

To borrow a phrase from one student, these are the most amazing things I’ve heard about my work in a while. And they offer hope that if those of us at orchestras [my fellow music directors in particular] approach opportunities to perform for young people with the same commitment and excitement we reserve for the rest of our concerts there may be a future for our art form after all.