‘Encounter’ Aims to Teach Kids That Music Knows No Barriers

“We’re not making them learn what’s Mozart, what’s Bach, what’s a sonata and what’s a symphony--the heck with that. Feel something. Just feel something. Let the music paint a picture. Let it talk to you.”

Sylvia Kunin is describing “Musical Encounter,” her 17-year-old, Emmy Award-winning television series that introduces children to a variety of musical styles and instruments.

The series airs each Thursday at 10:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. on the Los Angeles Unified School District’s educational station, KLCS Channel 58. And next Monday through Friday at 5 p.m., KCET Channel 28 will offer a sampling of the 20 half-hour shows that have been produced at public-TV stations around the country and that are seen nationally in grades K through 6.

The formula is simple: interaction between outstanding child musicians, adult guests and a child audience, in an informal setting.

“My dream has been to bring young people and music together,” Kunin said in a recent interview. At 76, she is petite and fragile, with a cloud of white hair, but ready to take on all comers with an impassioned verbal toughness.

“We’re not encouraging the audience to become artists. And we don’t allow the players to feel this is a concert performance,” she stressed. “They are sharing their love of music with their peers.”

Segments focus variously on the cello, the voice, the harp, pop and country music and so on. Guests range from Los Angeles Philharmonic assistant conductor David Alan Miller to composer/conductor/pianist Lalo Schifrin to Florence Henderson and Dolly Parton’s sister Stella.

The intent is simply to expose children to the sound. “We don’t say you can’t live without it,” Kunin said. “We’re saying, ‘Hey, look, listen to this. If you like it, fine. If you don’t, fine.’ ”

Kunin, a pianist who studied with Artur Schnabel, feels that there is a pervasive, elitist attitude among artists and aficionados of “serious” music that discourages potential audiences. She fears that children will think that to appreciate classical music, “you gotta be rich, you gotta be special and you gotta be a genius.”

Kunin’s involvement with young people began in 1955 when she founded the Young Musician’s Foundation. It has given a boost to such impressive talent as Mischa Dichter, Christopher Parkening, Michael Tilson Thomas and Shirley Verrett.

But Kunin gradually realized she wanted to do more than discover young talent. “If we don’t build audiences, we’re going to play for the chairs. That ain’t gonna work.”

“Musical Encounter” began in 1972 on public television in Honolulu, where Kunin and her husband, actor Al Eben, had moved when he was working in “Hawaii Five-O.” In 1977, when the couple returned to Los Angeles, Kunin began a long struggle to start a new, nationwide “Musical Encounter” series.

Unable to obtain national funding (“I went to Washington, and all I heard was, ‘It sounds good and you should do a study’ ”), Kunin began a one-woman crusade to solicit volunteer participation from orchestras and choruses; then, with talented child musicians in tow, she took the program to local schools.

Eventually, Kunin scraped up enough funding to tape a few of the programs at KLCS.

A representative for Great Plains National, an educational television distribution company, saw the shows, Kunin said, and wanted to handle them.

“But they wanted 30 or 40 shows,” she said. “I had just killed myself to raise enough money for two.”

She said she thought of “a gimmick.” She called various cities and asked local musical institutions if they’d be willing to participate, then called the public television stations in those cities and simply asked if they would produce one half-hour program featuring the local talent.

The response amazed her.

“My whole life I have been very pessimistic about people,” Kunin admitted. “But whether it was Cleveland, or Rochester, or Miami or Muncie, Ind., everybody, to the last man and woman, has made this a total labor of love.”

Now, when a PBS station pro-duces a half-hour “Musical Encounter,” it is given seven existing shows to air as well.

Gaylen Whited of Great Plains National, which has been distributing “Musical Encounter” since 1983 to state departments of education, school districts and stations nationwide, agreed that the series’ evolution has been unusual.

“Most educational programs are done with federal money,” Whited explained. “It was something of an anomaly that we were producing the series, and growing at it, by doing in-kind trades with stations.”

The secret of its success, Kunin said, is the commitment to quality.

“In television you have to be careful,” she explained. “It’s very easy to say ‘it’s good enough.’ I don’t like dishonesty and I don’t like charlatans and I hate mediocrity. The talent has to be of a level that will turn on the kids, so they say, ‘Ohhhh.’ ”

If it isn’t “top drawer,” she snapped, “I won’t do the program.”