ATLarts

By Atlanta Pearl Girl

November 9, 2007 4:40 PM | Link to this

I think exposing kids to all venues of music is very important. I remember the first symphony I attended…in Elementery School. It was at ASO and I was mesermized. My feet did not touch the ground and I can remember trying to look around someone’s fat head in front of me…. It was magical. My first Opera….. wow.

I have always listend to classical and opera…..love it.

You never know what will inspire a child.

Atlanta Pearl Girl

By jj

November 9, 2007 6:24 PM | Link to this

We recently took our 13 year old to see Trans Siberian Orchestra. He usually listens to rock, punk, etc. and this gave him the oportunity to see rock and classical merged. Great for getting into the Christmas spirit early as well.

By D

November 9, 2007 8:01 PM | Link to this

We play classical music in the children’s bedrooms while they sleep. It’s something we’ve done since the day they were born. I’m not sure that it will lead to a love of the genre, but at least they’ll be exposed to it. We have also recently bought a Barney CD for use during long car trips. Our 2 year old loves it and since it quiets him down we’ll gladly tolerate it. He’s just at the age now where I think he could sit through some sort of children’s concert/show but we have yet to take him to one. We’re looking forward to it, though.

By OldSchool

November 9, 2007 9:59 PM | Link to this

I’ve been playing classical music in my classroom for over 25 years. Some students deride the music at first but it wins them over. In fact, if I forget to turn it on, they complain. We all think it “fills up the empty space” and I think it has cut down on discipline problems. The students even recognize many of the melodies like “Salterello” and ” Copland’s “Rodeo.” I think it’s just neat.

My 2 year old grandson loves his drum music…nursery school songs played on percussion instruments and his “No!” CD by They Might Be Giants.

By RC Kim

November 9, 2007 11:18 PM | Link to this

As long as I was under my Dad’s thumb, I heard classical music only, whether I liked it or not. Throughout my life I’ve been everywhere in terms of how I felt about classical music: I’ve liked it, hated it, been indifferent about it, and in the last three years been more passionate than I ever have been.
Classical music, and fine arts in general, are a tremendous civilzing and ennobling influence. Sometimes a person has to be shoved into it, but so be it.
Two or three years ago, either in NY or LA, a judge sentenced 2 or 3 juvenile delinquents who perhaps were knee-deep in the gangsta rap culture to constant forced hearings of Verdi’s opera La Traviata, and I would dare say that is positive seed among weeds of negative influence.

By chris broe

November 10, 2007 8:20 AM | Link to this

My daughter was born during the first movement to Mozart’s Symphony #38. By the middle of the second movement she had found a flaw in Newtons Theory of Motion. By the exciting third movement, my daughter had organized the other infants in the nursery and they presented demands to the Hospital Administrator for more time with their mothers, all-cotton diapers, and teething anesthetics.

The first few days at home with my daughter were spent under the spell of “Figaro”. The first thing she did was to record a series of normal “gaga-googoo” sounds to play on a repetitive loop over our baby monitor to disquise what she was really doing. By the time of her first feeding, she had welded my car’s keyless entry gizmo to a tv remote and had all the cul-de-sac’s televisions locked out of all programming except Popeye cartoons.

Reluctantly, after that, I piped in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. Yes, you guessed it. She converted the mobile over her crib into a solar panel to get the energy required to recycle and mulch her baby poo for our garden.

Well, that was it for me. I knew I was outclassed and began playing Salieri. My daughter got held back in third grade, and is now on the FBI’s most incorrigible mall rat list.

Play Salieri. You’re the adult, dammit.

By kat

November 10, 2007 8:55 AM | Link to this

we listen to everything from debussy to tarrega to ella fitzgerald to the ojay’s. i love for the kids to hear REAL singers like ella or nat or sam accompanied by REAL musicians. and we are inspired by the beauty of classical music and love the lyrics of soul music or the largesse of big band music like glenn miller or duke ellington . christian worship music like fred hammond , cece winans or edward murphy or israel hammond is a staple and the favorite in our home. we listen to everything. not much radio though.

By Peachy

November 10, 2007 10:44 AM | Link to this

I have been playing classical music at night for my 2yo almost every night - we like how soothing it is (look for the Baby Einstiens Sleepy Time/Wake Up CD) and we listen to classical guitar when we take naps. Tony Bennett and Michael Bublé hang out in the car, and we are die-hard Little Einsteins junkies. iTunes is our best friend (if only they’d let me download Eva Cassidy!) It probably helps that my husband and I are both amateur musicians and although we love TV, there is nothing like a crisp fall evening with a fire, a mug of hot cider, and speakers full of tinkling ivories.

By HS Teacher

November 10, 2007 8:59 PM | Link to this

I’ve played classical music in my classroom since the late 70s when I taught in Coweta Co. As I went on to 3 other school systems in my soon to be 30 year career, I continue to use classical music.

Once, I had one of my students tell me he know what the music was—Bach. He told me it was elevator music. He’d heard it at Athens Regional Hospital.

Calming music helps children focus. As a Sp Ed teacher, I know my children need to practice their focus.

By Peter Stelling

November 11, 2007 1:50 AM | Link to this

Well, I was surfing, waiting for the real review of the opening night performance of this opera…but before I say anything else, I have to congratulate Chris Broe on his blog. That is one of the driest, funniest things I think I have ever read in this column. You have a career ahead of you in music criticism, my man! Just keep playing Salieri at home, lest your infant daughter should take the pen out of your hand and write it for you! As for tonight’s performance of HANSEL & GRETEL at the Cobb…wonderful blend of puppetry arts and good singing. It is a fine ensemble cast…the two principles are superb singing actresses. The witch is the most hilarious combination of the Bride of Frankenstein and Mae West imaginable…white streaks at the temples, huge breasted in a crimson gown and hands on hips, all propelled on top of an impossible pedestal under which three guys propel the machinery that makes her cruise the stage in search of the next tasty morsel. It is absolutely something to behold that is novel in stagecraft. The fact that she manages to sing well under those conditions is another miracle. The supreme accolades for the evening, however, go to the Atlanta Opera Orchestra and their maestro for this production, former ASO Music Director Yoel Levi. An old friend (from ASO Staff days thirty some years ago) greeted me at intermission and said to me, “now we are getting somewhere, with a REAL conductor in the pit of this opera house, wherever it might be.” And I have to agree…it was the mini-fantasy-fairy tale version of MEISTERSINGER coming out of the orchestra pit. (All who know the music of the real Engelbert Humperdinck acknowledge his similarities to Wagner, and tonight’s reading of his score was the absolute proof of that pudding…Levi is fully in tune with the school of German Romanticism.)
I mentioned that delicious prospect to the General Director of Atlanta Opera, Dennis Hanthorn, backstage after the performance, pointing my index finger at Maestro Levi…”will we do MEISTERSINGER next???” He said to me, appreciatively, “hand me a million bucks, and we’ll do it next season. MEISTERSINGER is a very expensive opera!” Any takers out there in metro-Atlanta land? Levi is the man to do it for us. I hope he will find a regular spot on the podium of Atlanta Opera.

By Sherryl

November 11, 2007 6:29 PM | Link to this

“March around the breakfast table” was a game our family played when my son was growing up. Each morning we would take turns choosing a classical selection to play during breakfast. Today,forty years later, my son is a major donor to his city’s orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic. He learned early in life never to skip breakfast or start his day without great music.

By Judy

November 11, 2007 8:48 PM | Link to this

Let watch Warner Bros cartoons same as we did when we were small. I will forever associate Barber of Seville with Bugs Buny…..

;o)

By Lindsay

November 12, 2007 8:09 AM | Link to this

My mother started taking my sister and me to concerts when we were 5 years old but not before establishing the rules. We were not allowed to talk, squirm, or cough. If we had colds, we were to suck on cough drops and hold our coughs until the applause. If we disturbed the patrons around us in any way, we were immediately taken home and straight to bed, missing the rest of the concert. Perhaps more importantly, the point of these rules was explained to us - we were there to listen and to appreciate the music, and we were not to deprive those around us of the same opportunity.

I believe that it is very important to expose children to live music, but I also think it’s very important to teach them how to be good audience members. I have been surprised at how many times I’ve seen parents bring children to the opera or to a concert of chamber music, let them talk through the entire performance, and then simply say “she’s only seven” or “he’s very excited” by way of explanation to the people sitting near them (and glaring at their children).

Taking children to concerts is an opportunity to expose them to something wonderful and enriching for them, yes, but it is also an opportunity to teach them how to behave in order to get the most out of the experience. If they cannot listen and appreciate, then they should not be allowed to go.

By Timothy

November 12, 2007 12:07 PM | Link to this

This article is just plain and simple marketing for the Atlanta Opera. The AJC should fire its editor for publishing such shenanigans. There is another Atlanta based opera company that has been doing the same Humperdink opera for years and has never even gotten a review or anything. Atlanta Opera blazes down a trail well traveled and gets four AJC articles about it?!!! I saw it. It was lame and I mean LAME in the most sincerest sense.

I think Pierre’s alleged agenda for killing the Fred Scott regime and promoting a new one is almost complete.

What are they paying you, Pierre?

By Sharon

November 14, 2007 11:38 AM | Link to this

Baby Einstein? I thought that was for LAZY parents who don’t mind if their children’s brains turn to MUSH. There are many studies that prove this, and no studies that backup the Baby Einstein claims. It’s cheap babysitting, not education. Ya kno, one has to suspect that “product placement” salesmen will invade blogs and make comments that really are very clever marketing. Beware! Timothy, I saw the Hansel and Gretel and found it delightful and appreciate Pierre’s recommendation for CDs. What about that makes him in the payroll?