Matt Blauer plays trombone for the Wichita Symphony Orchestra.
But today he’s playing a different role — as teacher and storyteller for a room full of children at a library in southeast Wichita.
“Welcome to the orchestra! Please take your seats,” Blauer said. “The concert is about to begin.”
A new summer program at the Wichita Public Library — “Welcome to the Wichita Symphony” — gives kids a close-up look at what makes up a classical orchestra. Several times over the summer, local musicians gather at the library to discuss and demonstrate their instruments and answer kids’ questions about the symphony.
“To us, this is like early recruiting,” Blauer said. “Let’s get young people interested in music. If we sell some symphony tickets, great. But this is to get young people interested in music and hopefully get them into orchestras and bands, and even choirs.”
As part of the library show-and-tell program, Blauer reads from a children’s book titled “Welcome to the Symphony” by Carolyn Sloan.
“A melody is a tune. It’s a series of notes that make up a musical sentence,” he read. “Harmony is the combination of two or more pitches sounding together.”
The book has buttons on the side that play different parts of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5, including sounds made by the violin, viola, cello, double bass and more. Families who attend one of the library programs get a free copy of the book to take home.
During the program at the Walters branch library, five musicians brought instruments to demonstrate and play solo, and as part of the ensemble: Laura Black on violin, Susan Mayo on cello, Maya Grossman on bassoon, Gray Bishop on trumpet, and Joe Milelait on percussion.
Each played a few bars of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” as well as Disney tunes that most of the children quickly recognized.
Amanda Runyon attended with her 2-year-old son, Henry, and his baby sister, Charlotte. She said Henry heard a classical quartet during the Christmas season last year, and “he has been mesmerized by the symphony ever since.”
Runyon says classical music seems to soothe her active toddler, so she plays it for Henry whenever he asks.
“He gets just kind of in the zone when he’s listening to this kind of music. It just really seems to resonate with him,” she said. “And it has a good effect on his behavior, which I appreciate as the mother of a 2½-year-old with a lot of energy. It seems to really calm him down, too, which is wonderful.”
Research shows that music is good for kids’ brains, too. A 1994 study found that exposure to music can increase spatial-temporal reasoning, which is key to finding relationships among patterns and, eventually, learning math concepts.
Experts think that the basic elements of music — including the beat, rhythm, patterns and melody — can help spur students’ skills in a variety of areas.
John and Anastasia Baer brought their 1-year-old son, Joseph, to the Walters branch library to see and hear the musicians.
“Every child should be exposed to high culture, instead of just pop culture,” John Baer said. “There’s a deeper form of engagement, I suppose, with the tradition of the past.”
Blauer, the trombone player who also serves as the Wichita Symphony’s personnel director, said each program features different instruments.
“But the bottom line is live music,” he said. “Having kids see it, having that fun, having that spark. … It’s something special.”
The next “Welcome to the Symphony” program — and the final one for this summer — is 2:30 p.m. on July 26 at the Angelou branch library, 3051 E. 21st St.
