December 20, 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Portland, Ore. … Symphony Storytimes programs with live musical accompaniment by Oregon Symphony musicians will continue at Multnomah County Library’s North Portland branch in January due to an innovative ongoing partnership between the Library and the Symphony’s department of Education and Community Engagement. The next series of Storytimes will feature weekly events at the North Portland Library on Tuesday afternoons, Jan. 11, 18 and 25, at 3:30 p.m. and Feb. 1 at 3:30 p.m. The North Portland branch of the Multnomah County Library is located at 512 N. Killingsworth St., 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 continue at the Midland Library in February and 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. Building on the success of the November Symphony Storytimes at the Sellwood Library, which attracted over 70 attendees to the final program, each of the Storytimes will feature stories that will be enhanced by music from one of the four families of musical instruments: brass, woodwinds, percussion and strings. The first Storytime, hosted by Symphony trombonist Alan Pierce on Jan. 11, will feature the brass family musically illustrating stories such as “Honk” and “The Things that Annoyed Farmer Brown.”On Jan. 18, clarinetist Todd Kuhns will introduce kids to the instruments of the woodwind section with stories like “Do Like a Duck Does” and “Run, Jump, Whiz, Splash.” The following week, on Jan. 25, percussionist Tom Sessa will demonstrate the instruments of the percussion section with stories such as “Mouse Goes to a Concert” and “Shake, Shake, Shake.” The series concludes on Feb. 1 with cellist Tim Scott introducing the instruments of the string section with stories like “Berlioz the Bear” and “The Bat Boy and His Violin.”
Working in collaboration with the youth librarian, each player will choose music for his 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 when the storytelling is over, 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 can then participate in a craft 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 can 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) and coffee can drums. In lieu of actual brass instruments, kids can make paper horns and 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 toilet paper roll kazoos, 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 features the instruments they have been studying and building. These recommendations tie into the library’s inventory of books and CDs.
T he 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.
