What are the Youth Concerts?
Students from local schools participating in the Link Up program bring their instruments and voices to perform with Santa Cruz Symphony from their seats at a series of rousing weekday Youth Concerts. Through Carnegie Hall's Link Up partnership with the Symphony, fourth and fifth grade students have spent weeks learning to read music, sing, clap to rhythms, and play recorders while in their classrooms. The compositions they have been studying are the same pieces being performed at our Youth Concerts. When they attend these concerts, they engage and participate in the concert program. For many students, this is their first exposure to live orchestral music!
What do students learn?
Santa Cruz Symphony’s commitment to music education goes far beyond "Do-Re-Mi." Our educational programs include movement, rhythm, dancing, instruments, group participation, cultural arts traditions, and so much more. At our Youth Concerts, we invite some of the best music and dance artists in the county—including many young performers—to help us inspire students. In addition to acquiring new music skills and knowledge through Link Up, students learn how to listen and appreciate music in a concert setting, how to be expert audience members, and what it's like to come together with others to appreciate the arts.
How does our community benefit?
Communities that embrace music are culturally rich and vibrant in spirit. Giving young people the chance to interact with orchestral music, even briefly, can have a huge impact on how they participate in the arts in the future—both as audience members and as performers on the stage. Music also has the power to unite people. Participating in musical activities together with students from other backgrounds develops social cohesion and an awareness of how much we can learn from one another.
See and hear what students have been learning. Come to our Family Concert on Sunday, March 2!
Want to learn more about how your school can participate in our educational programs for 4th and 5th graders? Email education@santacruzsymphony.org for more information!