A seat in the hall

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, April 14th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: A musical mission. Teaching young students about music doesn’t just check extracurricular boxes. It can boost literacy, strengthen math skills, and even raise graduation rates.

REICHARD: And when live performances are crafted specifically for kids, the experience can spark new interests.

WORLD Senior Writer Kim Henderson recently attended just such an event. Here’s her report.

KIM HENDERSON: It’s 10 a.m. on a Friday. Sunlight is streaming through a bank of sky-high windows in historic Bennett Auditorium at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Gregory Wolynec is the university’s director of orchestral activities. He takes the mic and gives some background on the composer of the piece the audience is about to hear.

WOLYNEC: His name was George Gershwin . . .

The audience is mostly elementary students. Rows and rows of them.

WOLYNEC: And George Gershwin was famous because he wrote lots of popular hits, things that you would hear, maybe on the radio, . . .

The university’s internationally recognized orchestra begins to play George Gershwin’s composition, An American in Paris.

The music is beautiful. Very polished and professional. But it’s mid-morning on a workday. Why would a university symphony go to the trouble of putting on a concert just for kids?

WOLYNEC: The target audience usually for these programs is third to fifth grade. That's the couple of years before they decide whether or not they want to get involved within instrumental music in their schools. So if we can do something to sort of light that spark that's a primary objective for me with the children's concerts.

Wolynec is enthusiastic and relatable. He has an easy rapport with this crowd.

WOLYNEC: George, can we hear a little of our special instrument? [sound of horns] Taxi horns! [crowds laughs] . . .

The kids love it when Wolynec introduces another instrument.

WOLYNEC: The tuba! [Crowd claps.]

He teaches them about Mississippi’s musical connections.

WOLYNEC: The blues developed over in the Mississippi Delta . . .

MUSIC: [BLUES]

Still, Wolynec doesn’t like to interrupt the performance too much.

WOLYNEC: It's really better if the students can also get sort of the context of the piece. So if we took a work that's 20 minutes long and then divide it into four sections that are about five minutes each, that's a manageable chunk that children of this age can follow.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, students who study music develop more than just musical abilities. They benefit in science and math, too. Also, at-risk students enrolled in music and arts courses find school more engaging. They’re less likely to drop out, and they’re more likely to pursue higher education.

For children’s concerts, Wolynec likes to add a layer of visual stimulation to keep students’ attention. The orchestra members are dressed in black, and above them a video plays on a huge screen.

WOLYNEC: One of my graduate assistants, Carlos Tello, spent many hours mining archival footage to find, you know, Paris in the 1920s. There's some very famous taxi horn sounds that go on and sort of the bustling city. So he was able to capture that through archival video. And then he and another student also worked to animate a figure of George Gershwin, who was sort of walking around Paris…

The choice of Gershwin’s music for today’s concert was intentional. An American composer for America’s 250th birthday.

Another intentional component: making sure the orchestra members buy in on the importance of playing for kids.

WOLYNEC: The first day of the semester, I called a mandatory meeting for everyone that would play over the course of the semester, explained what the calendar was, and then said, we have the opportunity to do a children's concert. . . .

Mariah Atwood is a member of the orchestra. She’s getting her masters in trumpet performance. She was there when they voted unanimously to do the concert.

ATWOOD: This is always super fun for us. It's another opportunity to perform it before our big performance, and we always like entertaining the kids when they come.

WOLYNEC: We have a trumpet solo, and it sounds something like this: [sound of trumpet] Oh, yeah! [Kids clap.]

Going forward, Wolynec says his orchestral conducting students will be expected to design and present a children’s concert like this one, where students listen until the very end.

INTERACTION: Thank you. Thanks for coming. That was such a treat. Thank you, because usually the concerts are at night with kids.

As some adults stop to thank Wolynec after the concert, a mom explains in one word why she drove her children more than an hour for the experience. Exposure.

MOM: It's not something I can offer my kids at home, so I think it's neat they can see it firsthand, see what it's like.

Wolynec agrees.

WOLYNEC: We can watch videos, we can listen to recordings, we can talk about music, but to actually see professional level musicians performing and presenting this in a program that's been tailor made for them. There's just so many positives for it.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

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