Through the program, students participate in hands-on activities, an interactive performance with an orchestra and jazz ensemble, and explore elements that contribute to the moment when the orchestra starts to “swing.”
“The program is so interactive between the audience and the performers. Pretty much everyone in that hall was a performer,” said Inger Neighbours, youth education program manager for the SSO. “It was so fun and the energy was so high.”
During the program, the students discover “swing” can be many things.
“It’s a distinctive rhythmic feeling; a musical era dominated by big band jazz; a style of dance that grew alongside the music; and that elusive but unmistakable feeling that results when musicians are deeply tuned into each other and playing in sync, or “in the pocket,” according to the SSO.
Link Up is a program of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. It pairs orchestras with students in grades 3-5 at schools in their local communities to explore orchestral collections through a hands-on music curriculum.
Students who participate in the program attend a concert where they sing and play recorders or string instruments with the orchestra from their seats, and also compose and perform their own pieces inspired by the orchestral collection they studied.
“This (program) contributes to the school’s music education program, so that the teachers can set that into their curriculum and prepare for this. There were kids coming with instruments, they knew the music they were performing along with the orchestra, so these kids knew the material and were prepped on it,” Neighbours said.
Carnegie Hall has partnered with local, professional, community and university orchestras since 2003 to offer the Link Up program at sites around the world. Through the partnership, Carnegie Hall works to support orchestras’ existing education programs, strengthen their partnerships with local schools, and provide high quality curricula, resources, professional development and other supports.
Neighbours said she hopes to get more schools involved next year and that anyone and all local schools are welcome to participate.
For more information about Link Up or to help the Springfield Symphony Orchestra continue to offer its music education programs, contact the SSO office at 937-325-8100.
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