5 tips to introduce children to classical music
Explore This Story
Concert pianist Jason Cutmore and narrator Rick Phillips perform two concerts for children and their families July 22 and 29 at Music Niagara, Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Prokofiev’s musical tale, “Peter and the Wolf” is featured in the first concert at noon in the Pumphouse which has an animal theme and includes Aaron Copland’s “The Cat and Mouse.” The July 29 lunchtime concert features toys and dolls including music of Claude Debussy, “The Golliwog’s Cakewalk” and “Toy Box.”
Cutmore and Phillips share these five tips on introducing children to classical music:
1) Be sincere. Show them that you love this music and are committed to it and love performing or listening to it, says Phillips. And, adds Cutmore, Enthusiasm is infectious. Conveying your love of classical music to kids is more important than conveying information about it.
2) Don’t talk down to them. Give them the straight facts in clear, concise language and style, says Phillips, adding parents should be open and answer any and all questions, regardless of how silly or mundane they may seem.”
3) When introducing a piece of classical music to kids, relate it to something else (musical or extramusical) in an imaginative, fun way, says Cutmore. Parents should be imaginative and encourage kids to be imaginative, to be creative with how and where the music takes them to create their own film from the “soundtrack.”
4) Make kids’ exposure to music hands-on through school music classes, choir and instrument lessons. And give children the (very true) impression that these educational endeavours are important — just as much as is math class, says Cutmore.
5) Recordings are an easy and natural way to start, but also include the live concert experience, says Phillips, adding there are many child-friendly concerts now offered by the Canadian Opera Company, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, National Ballet and more he adds. There is an “event” quality to a live concert that children realize and appreciate. It also allows parents, to experience with their child, says Phillips. Cutmore agrees. He advises parents to take kids to all kinds of live music concerts — classical, jazz, world — and to not be afraid to challenge them a little. Teach kids concert etiquette so that it becomes natural and comfortable to them. He adds parents should take kids to see ballets and other dance performances, and older kids to operas because the visual element stimulates the imaginative faculties and helps kids enjoy the classical music. He says it also gives kids an appreciation of the arts generally.
- Markham to Mogadishu: Why westerners are joining the jihad
- Updated Blue Jays fall flat against Yankees in New York
- DiManno: The mayor should speak up
- NEW Elijah Harper’s body to lie in state at Manitoba legislature
- Doug Ford tells radio show he’s never seen Rob Ford involved with coke
- Tim Bosma: The painful search for a missing man
- What’s open and closed on Victoria Day
- Missing woman's last call was to Dellen Millard, says ex-boyfriend