A classical music concert where the kids can make noise – to accompanty the music

Published 1:30 am Thursday, November 22, 2018

Here’s an unusual treat: A chance to go to a symphony concert with kids who will have the opportunity to do more than simply be quiet, sit still and listen.

In fact, they will have a chance to be active and make noise. That will happen during the closing number of Sunday’s Everett Philharmonic Orchestra’s annual family concert.

A member of the orchestra, timpanist Todd Parks, will take center stage and ask the audience to reach for a set of tiny jingle bells they were handed as they walked in.

On cue, they will be asked to shake the bells as part of an auditorium-wide accompaniment to the holiday tune “Sleigh Ride.”

Parks will talk to the audience about how to do it, said Cami Davis, the group’s general manager.

“They’re being trained as instrumentalists,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for them to join the orchestra.”

That’s just one part of a concert geared toward families that will include a sampling of compositions by composers such as Tchaikovsky and Richard Strauss.

“We won’t play full symphonies and concertos,” said Paul-Elliott Cobbs, the orchestra’s music director. “It’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that.”

As one example, the group will play Tchaikovsky’s “Symphony No. 4 in F minor,” but only a portion of it. The same goes for Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” far better known as the theme song from the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

The program is entitled “Music for the Imagination.” Its aim is to engage children — and people of all ages — at a concert expected to last about an hour.

“I think it’s important to make sure that younger people have a chance to experience classical music,” Cobbs said, in a concert geared to their patience and attention spans.

Other selections include Ernest Bloch’s prelude and fugue from “Concerto Grosso No. 1” for strings and 13-year old cellist Carson Ling-Efird, playing the first movement of “Édouard Lalo Cello Concerto No. 1.”

Ling-Efird made her solo debut with the Seattle Symphony as a 2017-18 Seattle Symphony Young Artist.

Many adults have never had the chance to experience a symphony concert, Cobbs said. “This is a way for parents and grandparents to experience a potpourri of classical music without feeling like they don’t belong,” Cobbs said. “Because it’s laid back, you just sit back and enjoy the music and all the different sounds the orchestra can make.”

The cost of babysitters may be a barrier to young families preventing them from attending concerts. “This concert allows them to bring the kids,” he said.

Audience participation doesn’t end with the shaking of jingle bells for “Sleigh Ride.”

The family concert provides a once-a-year post-concert opportunity for children to meet symphony members, who are set up with their instruments.

“They get to see the conductor, too,” Cobbs said. He gives kids a quick lesson in conducting — using a candy cane to give them an idea of what it’s like to hold a conductor’s baton.

Sunday’s concert “is a place and time where you’re beginning to celebrate the holidays,” Cobbs said. “The whole family can go and have a good time.”

Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.

If you go

What: Everett Philharmonic Orchestra’s “Music for the Imagination”

When: 3 to 5 p.m. Nov. 25

Where: Everett Civic Auditorium, 2415 Colby Ave., Everett.

Tickets: General admission $20, youth 5-18 $10 and children younger than 5 get in free; four or more tickets $10 each

More: 206-270-9729 or www.everettphil.org