San Angelo Symphony Presents "The Orchestra is a Zoo" Youth Concert

SAN ANGELO, TX - For many San Angelo students, there are a variety of cultural arts activities that serve an educational purpose. One such activity is taking place tomorrow through the San Angelo Symphony's annual youth concert.

Amanda Dawson, Marketing & Education Associate for Symphony, proudly announced, "The Symphony is holding its annual youth concert Friday, March 3, at the McNease Convention Center, located at 500 Rio Concho Drive. We have invited 3rd through 5th graders from around the Concho Valley and will end up having about 2,400 students, which is up from last year, so that's great."

Last year's theme was magic (click here), and the Symphony deemed the event a tremendous success.

Dawson added excitedly, "It's the biggest thing I do all year."

 

Students will be coming from as far away as Barksdale, Texas, Canyon ISD, and, she added, "That's about 2 1/2 hours away, I think, so it's a really fun event."

Additionally, parents who home school bring their children as well.

Dawson continued, "We'll have two performances, one at 10:00 a.m. and one at 12:30 p.m., and this year the theme is 'The Orchestra is a Zoo.' We will have the San Angelo Nature Center there with some different animals to go along with the theme; it should be a really fun time. In addition to the students being exposed to symphonic music, some of them for the first time, we also work with local teachers to create a curriculum that goes along with each piece of music at the concert. The teachers are provided with that curriculum ahead of time so that they can use it in the classroom."

By doing so, Dawson said the students come to the concert having already heard the music, engaged in lessons related to the music and they've learned about the different composers and time periods when the music was created.

"It's just a really good learning experience for them," said Dawson. The curriculum is also TEKS approved and designed around specific TEKS objectives; it's a really beneficial program that we have here." 

As an added bonus, at the end of the concert, the musicians will do a little instrument demonstration and the children learn about the different families such as the brass, woodwinds, percussion, and strings. They also get to see the tympani, violins, and other instruments.

During the performance, Dawson noted, "The animals will be on stage, and we're going to have a representative from the Nature Center to talk about each animal. They'll have an assistant to hand them each an animal, which include a bearded dragon, a hedge hog, a snake, rabbits, turtles, and much more." 

For 67 years, the San Angelo Symphony has been an oasis of cultural activity in a 13-county region of West Texas and the Concho Valley. The annual youth concert is just one of the free educational events the San Angelo Symphony offers.

 
For more information, please contact the Symphony office at (325) 658-5877, or visit www.sanangelosymphony.org.