An Upbeat Mission

On the blackboard, in perfect teacher script, Ms. Hammer had written some unfamiliar words.

Tempo.

Concerto.

Symphony.

Then there were the instruments to learn.

“Everybody say ‘timpani,’ ” Stephanie Hammer said.

“Timmmpani,” her fifth- and sixth-graders intoned.

Understanding the difference between a kettle drum and a clarinet, between a violin and a viola, are all part of Symphonic Adventures, a program with the ambitious goal of turning today’s hip-hop kids into lovers of classical music. Sponsored by the New West Symphony, it introduces more than 9,000 Ventura County elementary school children each year to orchestral music, concluding with a New West concert.

Hammer laments that in her McKinna School classroom--as in most others around the county--there is little time for music and art. Reading and math are top priorities, often at the expense of the arts. Besides, the kids agreed that classical music is for old people.

The hope is that a field trip to hear a professional orchestra might prompt them to buy a symphonic CD or, better yet, take up an instrument.

“I’m not trying to teach a child in one hour everything there is to know about music, or for that matter even a little bit,” said New West conductor Boris Brott, who has modeled Symphonic Adventures after a program he runs for 60,000 schoolchildren in Canada.

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“What I want them to take away from the program is curiosity about music and the fact that they’ve enjoyed the experience,” he said. “The concert hall is not a mausoleum.”

But first, the students needed a grounding so they could understand what they were hearing. Weeks before the concert Thursday, the symphony sent suggestions for lesson plans and audiotapes to Hammer’s school. Altogether, students from 300 county schools saw one of New West’s seven performances.

Brott hoped the teachers would “create lesson plans for the kids that make them use their imaginations and learn a little something about history. I want them to tell the kids what they’re going to experience.”

Hammer spent a portion of four days discussing Franz Joseph Haydn and his music with her 36 students. She told them about the composer’s life in 18th century Europe and related it to the American colonial period the class was studying. She used a seating chart from the Philadelphia Symphony to show how an orchestra is structured, and played the tape of Haydn’s music provided by New West.

“If the kids hear the music and they get familiar with it, it makes a big difference,” Hammer said.

After learning that a concerto is “a piece of music featuring a soloist with orchestral accompaniment” and hearing one of Haydn’s concertos for trumpet, Hammer’s students chose the instrument they would feature if they were to compose a concerto.

Maribel Munoz, 11, was one of several students who favored the harp.

“I really like its heavenly sound,” she wrote.

Vincent Figueroa preferred the double bass.

“I like the deep sound it makes,” his essay said. “But the problem is I wouldn’t like carrying that big instrument around.”

On the day of the concert, before walking from their classroom to the Oxnard Performing Arts Center, Hammer made a few rules.

Don’t walk on the grass, do greet people you pass, don’t pet dogs, don’t hitchhike.

At the concert, there would be “no hooting, no hollering, no whistling,” she admonished. “And if other classes do that, they do it. And that’s too bad. But we don’t do it.”

To fight their urge to act up, she reminded them of “rock-paper-scissors” and other quiet games they could play while waiting.

Concert-going was not completely foreign to Hammer’s students. The class attended a performance of “The Nutcracker” ballet in December--several fell asleep--and some students had been to rock concerts, heard mariachi bands or heard to similar music at church.

But Haydn, nicknamed “Papa” because he fathered the modern symphony and string quartet, was not a guy the students knew. To make the composer more familiar, Los Angeles actor John Slade portrayed him, complete with powdered wig, knee-high boots and a tail coat.

Brott acted as the straight man, the second fiddle, to Slade’s Haydn. Sprinkled into their scripted exchanges were trivia about the composer’s life and historical context for his music.

About 50 Oxnard Elementary School District students on recorders joined about 40 New West musicians for Haydn’s “St. Anthony Chorale.” Alone, the students’ music resembled wind whistling through a canyon, but with Brott’s conducting and the orchestra providing rhythm, a convincing and even pleasing tune--along with several proud smiles--emerged.

During the finale, Haydn’s “Toy Symphony,” three of Hammer’s students volunteered to blow nightingale whistles. Brott played a duck call.

Through it all, spread out over three front rows, Hammer’s class was among the hall’s best-behaved. That’s not to say they were enthralled by the performance; several rested their chins in their hands, stared at the ceiling and yawned.

Still, no one fell asleep.

“Playing for an audience of kids is both very challenging and very satisfying,” Brott said. “These kids don’t lie. If they get bored, you know.”

Brott hopes to expand Symphonic Adventures beyond grades three to six.

“Ultimately,” he said, “what I would like to see is an integrated program whereby there would be a pre-K to grade 12 stream of programming, where every child in Ventura County would get to see the orchestra once a year.”

If concert-going became an annual event, Brott believes those students might continue the tradition as adults.

“If one-tenth of those kids become future subscribers to symphony orchestras,” he said, “we’ll have added another half an audience every year.”

After Thursday’s concert, a few of Hammer’s students said they might consider listening to more of this “relaxing” classical stuff. Several were interested in learning to play an instrument.

Frances Weller, 10, who said she would like to take up the harp, said some of the concert was not as she expected.

“I always thought that the conductor used two batons, or whatever those sticks are called, but he uses his hand and his stick,” she observed.

This spring will bring more music to Hammer’s class, when she teaches her students the recorder, an instrument she remembers playing “Three Blind Mice” on when she was their age.

“Because of that, I joined band in seventh grade and wasn’t afraid to try out,” she said.

Hammer hopes her students will have a similar experience.

“If they’re not exposed,” she said, “they have no idea what their talent is.”