Inspiring Young Minds With Classical Music

Catherine Ransom rattled off the names of the most famous classical composers she could think of, waiting for the fourth-graders to identify their favorites.

But Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart didn’t prompt even a flicker of recognition across any of the children’s faces at the Hollywood elementary school the professional flutist was visiting as a volunteer.

“I was saying the names of some really mainstream, relevant people, and none of them knew who they were,” said Ransom, who joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic six years ago. “That’s the kind of thing where I go, my God, that’s got to change.”

That is changing in the classrooms where Ransom and other musicians started volunteering this year for a Philharmonic effort to reach children whose musical background is more Backstreet Boys than Bach.

The Philharmonic’s School Partners initiative brings arts professionals and a classical music curriculum to five elementary schools in Los Angeles County and follows the children for at least three years. Middle and high schools are set to be added in the next two years.

Five Philharmonic musicians, including second-chair flutist Ransom, each visit the schools six times, and about a dozen other arts professionals lend their skills in dance, choreography or composition. Students and their families are also taken to Philharmonic concerts in downtown Los Angeles, several fine-tuned for children--shorter length, perkier music and more casual dress.

In addition to learning basic musical concepts, third-graders study percussion, fourth-graders learn to play the recorder, and fifth-graders compose and perform the second movement of a work about a girl who wishes gravity didn’t exist.

“It’s crucial to reach the students at all levels, both those who just have to hear the music to respond and those who really get engaged by making the music themselves,” said Llewellyn Crain, the Philharmonic’s director of education initiatives. “Anything we can do to enhance what the music teacher does is really vital, since they’re already stretched in so many different ways.”

Los Angeles Unified provides one day of music instruction for each of its district’s schools, which then can use their own discretionary funding to pay for additional days. Santa Monica Boulevard Elementary in Hollywood funds four extra days, and Ransom’s work there comes as a welcome bonus.

“There’s always more work to do than each of us can do alone,” said Richard Burrows, director of the Los Angeles Unified’s arts education branch. “I’m thrilled to have School Partners in our district. The different styles and ways that outside agencies do things call upon students to expand their minds.”

Arts Incorporated Into Academics

The schools in the program, chosen through a lengthy application process last year, are given tips on incorporating music into other academic subjects such as math and history. Third-graders in Odette Guzman’s class at the Hollywood school divide musical notes into fourths and quarters and learn about the life of “Mr. Bach.”

Ransom, 34, chose to focus on Bach because of his extensive flute music. As his music poured from her instrument during a recent session, children were told to draw what the music made them feel.

One boy colored a large square brown to honor Bach’s “Coffee Cantata,” while others drew scenes from their own lives, including a funeral and two hamsters pushing a soccer ball across a rug.

“The things I saw and heard from the children were amazing,” Ransom said.

“It’s really neat to be able to pull that out of some of the quieter kids who perhaps never had a chance to blossom before.”

Fifth-grade students collaborated with other professional musicians for three months to compose the second movement of “Gwendolyn Gets Her Wish.”

The 20-minute performance tells the story of a girl who blames gravity for her messy room, complaining the force makes her toys fall out of place. During the second movement, the stars grant Gwendolyn’s wish that gravity be suspended and the actors pretend to float around as their classmates play a raucous, screeching percussion medley.

The student musicians chose their own instruments, ranging from African bells and cymbals to coil drums, purple cans that make a thundering sound when shaken, all provided by the Philharmonic.

Santa Monica Boulevard’s Karina Villeda chose a vibratone, which resembles a metal pipe that the musician strikes with a small baton, because she liked its low sound. The “Gwendolyn” rehearsals helped her grasp the role teamwork plays in music.

“We really have to interact and listen to each other to get the sound right, all those different kinds of beats and instruments working together,” she said.

Fifth-grade teacher Tina Athans, who hears the children humming the Gwendolyn music in class, marveled at the volunteers’ effect on the children.

“They’re magicians,” she said. “I’ve never seen so many children so completely focused.”

A group of students from Breed Street Elementary in East Los Angeles came to a Philharmonic board meeting three weeks ago to play their recorders and talk about how music had changed their lives, entrancing officials as they squeaked out “Ode to Joy” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

“If anybody had a question about the worthiness of the program, this answered it,” said Philharmonic Assn. managing director Deborah Borda. “You couldn’t come in and fake something that powerful.”

Making Students Think Differently About Music

At Moffett Elementary in Lennox, a school so close to LAX that it was built almost entirely underground with no windows, Philharmonic harpist Lou Anne Neill entranced the children.

“When she was playing in the fifth-grade class, a boy raised his hand and said, ‘When you’re playing, is the music ever so beautiful that you feel like crying?’” said Jo Ann Isken, the school’s principal. “I would venture to say that he had never thought that way about music before.”

Neill let the nearly 200 students she met pluck her harp’s strings after playing several Bach compositions.

“In a sense, it doesn’t matter what I played, but I wanted to give them something really, really good so they could have it to enrich their lives,” said Neill, 55, a 19-year Philharmonic veteran. “Even if they didn’t know what they were hearing right when I played it, the music went inside and will be there to inspire them.”