Young People’s Concerts
The Young People’s Concert series introduces elementary students to the live performance of classical music. Modeled on the famous program popularized by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, the Young People’s Concert series utilizes music that is especially accessible and interesting to children. Students are invited on stage to sit next to musicians. The conductor explains the musical pieces and asks students questions to get them engaged in the concert. Most importantly, students have fun listening to classical music. After the concert, teachers use the concert experience to enhance their arts curriculum. The NBSO provides a teacher’s guide that provides lesson plans and creative educational ideas to help educators take full advantage of all that the program has to offer.
2012 Young People’s Concerts
Prosody Playground
This year, the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra's education programs are focused on music and literacy; an exploration of the fundamental similarities between music and language. Growing evidence in cognitive science shows that music and language share the same neural perception system and have strong similarities in syntax and semantics processing. Thus, recent studies have shown that music perception skills can strongly contribute to the development of linguistic skills, phonemic awareness, phonological memory and vocabulary development in children.
This year's Young People's Concerts entitled Prosody Playground will focus on the concept of prosody, as it is exemplified in both music and language. Throughout the concert program, we will explore how the author's creative use of punctuation in notable excerpts from children's literature creates specific prosodic effects such as segmentation (comma), closure (period) and prominence (caps or bold print). The New Bedford Symphony Orchestra will then perform live, classical music examples that demonstrate these same literary, prosodic effects through symphonic sound. The program will engage children in musical and literary activities that reinforce reading prosody and fluency while developing their perception and understanding of classical music.
Common Core Standards addressed in this program include:
- RL 1 Grades 3, 4 and 5-L 3.b Grade 4
- RF 4.b Grades 2, 3, 4 and 5
Concert date: Monday, March 5, 2012 at 9:30 a.m.
Many of the musical examples will be drawn from the acclaimed Music in the Morning program that the New Bedford Symphony has placed in more than 50 schools across the South Coast. If your school does not currently participate in Music in the Morning, please contact Terry Wolkowicz, NBSO Education Coordinator at 508-999-6276 for more information about how to bring this unique enrichment program to your school.
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