View a video of the Santa Maria Philharmonic Society’s production of “The Nutcracker.”
Scores of Santa Maria valley fifth graders lined the grass and pavement at the corner of Broadway and Morrison, patiently filing into the historic Ethel Pope Auditorium on the morning of Dec. 15. This was the second day of free youth outreach concerts for local students by the Santa Maria Philharmonic Society, which provided an abridged performance of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker in collaboration with the Civic Ballet of San Luis Obispo.
The concert is a new addition to the Philharmonic’s annual youth outreach program, explained second trumpet and board member Larry Hill, who stood outside the auditorium eyeing his tuxedo and shiny brass trumpet as youngsters filed in.
“This is an idea we had this year,” Hill said, “because we reach the third graders with the music van, we reach the fourth graders with the traditional Peter and the Wolf performance every spring, and we had this great idea to do a reduced Nutcracker—a Nutcracker for kids—and kind of expose them to a different facet after what they’ve seen before.”
The annual Peter and the Wolf concert teaches kids valuable themes in orchestral art music, like leitmotif, a musical theme associated with a character or idea. The narrator furthers the plot, but the actions and emotions of the characters take place in a theater of the mind with the sound acting as the primary input.
Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker is different though, it’s art music that was penned specifically to pair up with the visual image of dancers. Sugar plum fairies, Russian dolls, and wind-up toys are all characters in the fantastical story, and their essence is intrinsically bound to the rollicking music.
“They’ve seen the orchestra instruments over the past few years, they’ve heard them in Peter and the Wolf, but then to pair it with ballet to such recognizable melodies that they’ve heard before,” Hill said, “this is just an ideal age for them to have that experience, to actually see that visual set to classical music.”
Before the music began, concertmaster Brynne Albanese took the stage—challenging the kids to say “Tchaikovsky” five times fast—and introduced the instruments in their respective groups: brass, woodwinds, percussion, and strings (harp included). She also asked how many of the youth were musicians, and what appeared to be at least a quarter of the room raised their hands.
The Philharmonic’s dedication to youth outreach is widespread throughout the organization, Hill said, as many orchestra members remember their own childhood experiences seeing a concert for the first time. The experience is always a formative one for a young person who ends up studying a musical instrument, he explained.
“We’re just trying to give an awareness,” Hill said. “The important things about kids picking up an instrument is the physical activity, drawn with the cognitive activity that takes place—that’s left brain, right brain—and music is really the only thing that does that and gives them opportunity.”
There was certainly plenty of enthusiasm from the youngsters in the audience, who filled the hall with applause as the final chords rang and the dance ensemble took their bow.
A whole other batch of fifth graders was waiting their turn outside as the concert ended and the audience began to file out. As the kids left the concert, many could be seen twirling like ballerinas, playing the air violin, or swaying their arms like the conductor.
“The philharmonic is committed to our youth outreach programs—it’s really important,” Hill said. “It’s how we help these kids grow up, building that whole person, people of character who have awareness of the arts.”
Arts Editor Joe Payne is all for outreach. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
Santa Maria Philharmonic Orchestra’s prodcution of The Nutcracker,
held at Ethel Pope Auditorium in Santa Maria.
VIDEO COURTESY OF CHRISTINA BEARCE
This article appears in Dec 24-31, 2015.