Music Van Plays Well With Kids

With somber ceremony, 6-year-old Eric Schneider lifted the clarinet to his lips, puffed up his cheeks and let forth a glorious sound. It wasn’t music, exactly--it was more the kind of high-pitched shriek that forced grown-ups to cover their ears.

Totally awesome.

Eric also sawed a bow scritchy-scratchy across a violin, bang-bang-banged on a drum and generally contributed to a fantastic first-grade cacophony in the Tierra Linda Elementary School activity room, thanks to the inaugural visit of the New West Symphony’s music van Friday.

The van, which was donated by a coalition of county Rotary clubs, will travel with donated musical instruments to about 50 county schools. The only requirement for a visit--all of which are booked through the end of the semester--is that parents and teachers volunteer to take a class on the instruments and then take their students through a lesson.

The sounds produced by Betsy Sumner’s class on these 30 instruments probably wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the barnyard. But that is the point, volunteers say. You don’t become a musician overnight.

“The first few seconds you just go ‘Aaaaah!’ ” at the noise, said Rochelle Sullivan, a parent volunteer. “But after that, it’s just wonderful.”

The symphony had rented a Santa Barbara music van for about five years, but it was available only about two months of the year. Thanks to the new van, which arrived in December and was stocked with musical instruments donated by a local music store, more children will be able to get a hands-on lesson in music, from glockenspiel to trombone, symphony officials said.

“We did some work in Conejo last year, [and] they’re going ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ ” said Betsy Chess, executive director of Thousand Oaks-based New West. “But we’re really excited to be able to reach out to the west county.”

And that is a blessing, some teachers say. Although many Conejo schools have music programs, the west county has fewer classes that could foster a potential Itzhak Perlman. And music helps brain development and math skills, they add.

“It’s sad to know that it’s not important enough for our schools,” Sumner said. “But I’m as excited about orchestra as some people are about football.”

And that excitement seemed to reach these first-graders--admittedly not a difficult feat in a group of fidgety 6- and 7-year-olds--as they jiggled and swayed to the music Sumner taught before their experimentation began.

She let them listen to “Flight of the Bumblebee,” which sounded like “monsters chasing me in my head” to one girl. She explained all the instruments: the percussion, the brass, the strings--with the bass as “the big daddy.” And then she let them try the instruments: Drums boomed, flutes peeped and horns squawked from the four corners of the room--as the children played their instruments for visitors like Assemblyman Tony Strickland (R-Thousand Oaks) and Supervisor Frank Schillo.

Julia Malinowski got only a meager bleat out of her flute--even after blowing as hard as her 6-year-old lungs could blow. “I only got this much,” she said, holding her thumb and index finger a smidgen apart. Elsewhere, though, she seemed to have more natural talent.

“I played on the violin and it was good,” she said, beaming.

For some, the simple pleasures were the most satisfying: namely the pleasing, loud thump of the snare drum.

“I like the drum,” 7-year-old Karl Person said. “All you have to do is hit it.”

And the children’s enthusiasm had New West staff members feeling delighted about sharing one of their consuming passions.

“Normally, all of this music is just enclosed in a big hall,” said J.C. Hodgson, marketing director for the symphony. “We want to bring this to people who don’t normally come to that hall.”