Fourth grade students across the district were treated to a private concert from Las Colinas Symphony Orchestra musicians. A long standing Irving ISD tradition, these in-house concerts give young learners the opportunity to experience a live symphony orchestra.
“It’s so great that they get to see real life musicians,” says Gilbert Elementary School music teacher Jenni Allred. “It’s not often that our students go to an orchestra concert, and this allows them to see real musicians playing real instruments.”
During the performance students were taken on an auditory tour through music history and around the globe, hearing songs written by composers from every continent. The theme of this year’s concert, “It’s A Musical World,” showed students that anyone from anywhere can be a musician.
“I really liked the concert, it was interesting to see what songs they could play,” says Gilbert student Zoe Medel-Fore. “My favorite part was hearing songs that I knew, and hearing new songs I didn’t know yet.”
By the end of the concert, nearly every student in the room was tapping their hands and feet to the beat of new and familiar songs by composers like Bach, Brahms and Beethoven. For the Las Colinas Symphony Orchestra musicians, having a lively audience like this is the best part of the job.
“I love the faces they make when we play, when they see instruments they’ve never seen or hear a song they recognize. It’s awesome. ” says cellist Laura Ospina.
This concert is also the perfect opportunity for students to see and hear instruments that they too might be playing in just a couple short years. For Allred, she hopes that music will always be part of her student’s lives, whether that is as a musician or music enthusiast.
“We focus on instrument families in the fourth grade so that when they get to middle school and get to choose an instrument they know what they might want to pursue,” says Allred. “Music helps students express themselves, it helps them academically. It’s so important.”
