January 7, 2005
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Portland, Ore. … Symphony Storytimes featuring live musical accompaniment by Oregon Symphony musicians will continue at Multnomah County Library branches in February through the ongoing partnership between the Library and the Symphony’s department of Education and Community Engagement. Symphony musicians will collaborate with Youth Services Librarian Barbara Gorter to present fun-filled music-related stories at the Midland Library on Feb. 5, 12, 19 and 26 at 2 p.m. The Midland branch of the Multnomah County Library is located at 805 S.E. 122 nd Ave., Portland. Comcast and Health Net are co-sponsors of Symphony Storytimes.
This free series of stories told through music will be followed by an opportunity for kids to play the musical instruments themselves, as well as to make arts-and-crafts versions of the instruments. The Storytimes project will conclude at the Hillsdale Library in March.
This popular program is a favorite of children and parents alike. “The Storytimes provide exciting aural illustration of the characters and plot,” said one parent. “The music adds emotion and helps generate excitement in the story,” noted another. The librarian and Symphony musician will choose stories that will be enhanced by music from one of the four families of musical instruments: woodwinds, strings, percussion and brass. The first Storytime, hosted by flutist Carla Wilson on Feb. 5 will feature stories such as “Living Flute” and “Mouse Count.” On Feb. 12, cellist Gayle Budd O’Grady will introduce the instruments of the string section with stories like “Zin! Zin! A Violin” and “Mole Music.” The following Saturday, Feb. 19, percussionist Chris Perry will demonstrate the instruments of the percussion section with stories such as “Rap-a-Tap-a: Here’s Bojangles-Think of That!” and “Three Billy Goats Gruff.” The Midland Storytimes finish up on Feb. 26 with the brass family when Robert Taylor, a member of the trombone section, musically illustrates stories such as “Tacky the Penguin” and “Music Over Manhattan.”
Each player will choose music for his or her Storytime session that describes the narrative of the story in an imaginative, compelling way. In addition, each musician from the orchestra will introduce themselves to the children, explain how their instrument “works,” demonstrate how to hold it, and help the children try out a real instrument brought to the session for them to use. Kids may then participate in a crafts activity in which they will make their own instrument out of common household materials. Each Storytime will feature a different instrument crafts project: for the percussion family, kids might make paper plate shakers (paper plates stabled together with beans in the middle); egg shakers (Easter eggs or film canisters filled with rice, beans or beads) or coffee can drums. In lieu of actual brass instruments, the children will be invited to make toilet paper roll horns or garden hose French horns (a roll of garden hose with baby bottle nipples for a mouthpiece). Woodwinds will be represented by pop bottle flutes and drinking straw clarinets, and the stringed instruments will feature shoe-box violins with rubber band strings.
Kids and parents will also be given a specially printed bookmark with suggested readings and recommended CDs that feature the instruments they have been hearing and building. These recommendations tie into the library’s inventory of books and CDs.
The concept for the musical Storytime grew out of the Symphony’s three-year participation in the Creative Empowerment Program, funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which explores ways in which people learn to open their minds to creative expression and the exploration of new ideas. The Creative Empowerment Program emphasizes the use of one’s own prior emotional experience in creating a “point of entry” to the study of a new subject, which has led to the creation of a new Storytimes model for children that combines music with literature as a means of enhancing the learning process.
For more information call 503-228-4294 or visit the Symphony’s Web site at www.orsymphony.org.