Left: A third-grade student has fun clanging the cymbals. Right: Encinita Elementary School student shows her excitement as she handles the flute.
Every year, the distinctive Pasadena Showcase House Music Mobile™ in partnership with Pasadena Conservatory of Music (PCM), introduces musical instruments to third-graders in the San Gabriel Valley. This season, they have hit a high note with their expanded program. In addition to a hands-on lesson, the Music Mobile™ program now features a multi-media presentation complete with images and high quality sound, and a robust music curriculum folder chock full of lessons designed to help students connect music to other parts of their education.
Throughout the 2014-2015 season, the Music Mobile™ program will visit 30 elementary schools and give 82 assemblies to approximately 2,600 children in Pasadena, Rosemead, Duarte, Temple City, Arcadia, San Marino and La Cañada.
During a recent school assembly at Encinita Elementary School in Rosemead, Daniel Corral, an instructor at PCM and the program’s conductor, demonstrated how each instrument is played while the kids listened to segments from A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. The students giggled and jumped out of their chairs when Corral played the deep, low tones of a bassoon, the loud clanging of cymbals, and the high-pitched sound of the clarinet. Corral taught the children how to “buzz their lips” in order to play the brass pieces and showed them how the trombone makes higher and lower sounds as the slide is moved up and down.
