Saturday, March 26, 2011

The Charlotte Symphony

Saturday morning, we were up bright and early for a very exciting adventure! One of my assistants in children's choir had some tickets tht their family couldn't use for the Charlotte Symphony! They have a program called "Lollipops" - a Family Symphony experience! They have different themes that appeal to children and some pre-concert activities for kids to introduce them to music and instruments. We were SUPER excited to go and so thankful for this gift! We had a mini road-trip up to Charlotte (about 1.5 hours away) and made it up there at 10 am - just in time for the pre-concert activities to begin!
They had lots of activity sheets around with coloring pages of different instrument pictures, word searches of instrument families, etc. I picked up copies of all of them and stuffed them in my bag for later. They had a craft table set up where the kids could make their own castanets (finger cymbals) - Josiah, my artist, particularly loved this :)


Then we moved on to the musical petting zoo! They had ALL kinds of different instruments out for the all the kids to try out. (And yes, they cleaned each mouthpiece off after each person :) ) My kids absolutely LOVED it!!! Forgive all these picture, but I knew my Mom would just be in HEAVEN to see her grandkids playing all these instruments!!!







None of my kids could do the flute - I guess we don't give them soda bottles enough to learn how to blow across the top of them! :)


Both boys were able to get a sound out of the french horn though - I was SHOCKED! That's 6 feet of instrument to blow air through! They were able to play all the brass instruments and loved them!







Caleb and I took pictures of all the other kids and also played at a percussion table they had set up. That was more his speed - they had maracas, tambourines, a triangle, a djembe, and a snare drum set up. Fun stuff!
It was time to head in. We got to sneak a quick picture while the orchestra was still tuning. Callie said she loved the harp and wants to play that one. Of COURSE she would pick the FANCIEST and most expensive instrument!!!

We had an absolute blast. The concert was called "Green Eggs and Ham" and included some storytellers - one that narrated/acted out the whole story of Cat and the Hat. The orchestra played fabulous muic that the kids loved - including the Green Eggs and Ham song that had a soprano singing the "I do not like green eggs and ham" part, and a "Sam-I-am" character that was hilarious! They played some french music as part of a Mother Goose suite and told the kids to listen to different parts ("listen for the birds singing in this song", "listen for the clarinet - that is the voice of Belle; the contrabassoon is the voice of the Beast!") We loved it. It was such a wonderful way to give the children the symphony experience in the perfect environment - where it's ALL families with young children & it's okay that none of them could sit totally still and be silent! We had a BLAST! :)

3 comments:

sandi said...

sam just recently had a field trip to the symphony which was great for this music lover! i could always hear the melody they were trying to get the children to hear and whisper it is his ear to yell out. his class had the two front rows so we were well heard from. such a fun treat for your family to attend!

the mccollums... said...

LOVE It! Hate it that you were in Charlotte and I didn't see you! We need to get together sometime this spring/summer! I would love to meet your kiddos and you to meet my little one! Did you know the conductor for the Charlotte Symphony was asked to do the royal wedding in a few weeks! Awesome!

anthonyandbeth said...

WOW!!! that looks like so much fun! we are a couple hours away...want to do it again next year??? :)