MIAMI, Fla. – Nothing wrong with the Arsht Center, or playing for the public. The best way to reach young people, however, is to meet them on their turf.
Which is why Tuesday was so productive for the Cleveland Orchestra.
Instead of sitting back and waiting for young people to come downtown, the orchestra split up and went out into the community, playing and speaking at no fewer than three schools in one day.
The payoff won’t be immediate. The students the orchestra reached may never become musicians or subscribers. Still, the value of such appearances is probably impossible to overestimate.
The day began at Coral Reef High School, a “mega” magnet school in Southwest Miami. There, associate conductor Brett Mitchell and a large group of players took part in a “side by side” rehearsal with members of the school’s student orchestra.
No watered-down fare here. With help from their professional mentors, the students performed excerpts from the very repertoire the Cleveland Orchestra itself has been playing of late: Sibelius’ Symphony No. 2 and Mendelssohn’s “The Hebrides” Overture.
Most of the instruction took the form of private conversations between Cleveland Orchestra members and Coral Reef students. Those are always the meat of “side by side” rehearsals.
Still, Mitchell had a few words of wisdom for the group as a whole. Rehearsing the Sibelius, he noted that great musicians are also expert listeners, and know when and how to yield to a colleague (in this case, a flute) who belongs in the foreground.
“It’s not about how softly you play,” Mitchell explained. “It’s about how transparently you can play.”
Shortly thereafter, Mitchell and four other members of the orchestra made their way north to Coral Gables, to the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. There, in keeping with a now decade-long tradition, the musicians played through and commented on six new works by student composers.
For the six young artists in question, it was a momentous occasion. Any performance, for a budding author of music, is a rare treat. But a performance by a quartet from the Cleveland Orchestra, with live feedback? Possibly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Both of these were all business. Thankfully, the third and final event Tuesday, a “Musical Rainbow” program titled “The Terrific Trumpet,” was all fun.
Terrific it was indeed. At Pine Villa Elementary 30 miles south of downtown, trumpeter Michael Miller and pianist Carolyn Gadiel Warner had a roomful of 6-and 7-year-olds in stitches, laughing at sounds produced on bugle, cornet and trumpet mouthpieces and marveling at the vibrations of a toy instrument made from plastic tubing and a funnel.
They also let the children make music of their own. At various points, the children sang and hummed along to familiar tunes and marched in place like soldiers. For those 30 minutes, it was as if Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” (played by Miller at the outset of the program) had come true.
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