An Innovative Approach to Young Peoples’ Concerts

During the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra’s 2015-2016 Learning in Concert program, children from forty elementary schools all across Massachusetts and Rhode Island explored the shared concepts of adaptations and motion in classical music, biology and scientific illustration. During the classroom visit phase of the Learning in Concert program, the children were presented with three musical motifs that moved in the undulating, back and forth swimming motion of a fish. They selected one of these swimming motifs and gradually changed and adapted it so that it moved like another form of tetrapod locomotion. Their locomotion melodies were collected and arranged into a new piece for orchestra that was premiered for them at the NBSO’s annual Young People’s Concerts.