At KSO children’s concert in DeKalb, performing arts teaches ‘music as universal language’

DeKALB – More than 1,000 students packed into the Egyptian Theatre in DeKalb this month for what some educators said was their first experience at a live musical performance thanks to the Kishwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

The annual performance took area grade school-aged students on an hour-long musical trip across the world by playing iconic songs from Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and half a dozen other influential composers.

Jill McCormick, DeKalb School District 428 music coordinator and head of the music department at Founders Elementary School, said the experience is a quintessential part of a student’s musical education.

“Any opportunity that we can take where its child friendly, especially, for them to be introduced to this – this is some of our students’ first time in the Egyptian Theatre,” McCormick said. “For us, when we’re teaching we teach about instrument families, we teach about all of these foundational skills, and this is a really amazing opportunity for them to see it all come together.”

Lincoln “Linc” Smelser, Kishwaukee Symphony Orchestra director, selected tidbits of various famous musical compositions in an effort to enlighten students on the range of emotions music can illicit. Among the about dozen pieces that were performed was “Adagio For Strings” by American composer Samuel Barber.

Smelser described the song – which was played at former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s funeral – as one of the saddest songs ever written before performing a snippet of the piece. The song also has been used in American cinema classics and has been heard in clubs around the world after electronic dance music DJ and producer Tijs Michiel Verwest, A.K.A. Tiesto, reworked the classic in 2005.

That song didn’t garner much of a response from the young crowd, but the first few notes from Beethoven’s 5th Symphony produced a cacophony of cheers from the students. Smelser said selecting the pieces for the children’s concert was an important part of his job as orchestra director on Friday because he knows the music itself can influence the tone for the students’ behavior.

“If it slows down, or you program music that isn’t going to be engaging, or the orchestra is not playing in an engaging way then it’s easy to lose an inexperienced audience because they don’t really understand necessarily the intricacies of what’s happening,” Smelser said. “But if you can sell what you got going to them and keep them engaged, there are times in these concerts when you can hear a pen drop.”

During the show, Smelser complimented the students’ behavior, saying he’d never conducted in front of such a quiet audience of students before. At the concert’s conclusion, he rewarded those students with a performance of John Williams’ “Duel of the Fates,” from the climactic lightsaber battle in “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace.”

Kishwaukee Symphony Orchestra General Manager and violinist Courtney Hanna-McNamara said the performance aligns with the orchestra’s mission to engage, educate and enrich the community through music. She said the annual children’s concert is a way for the organization “to tick all three boxes of that mission statement.”

“This concert is really meaningful to me, personally,” said Hanna-McNamara, who has a background in education. “I think giving kids access to the performing arts as early and often as possible is so important for them. It’s building a future for DeKalb County, in terms of their involvement in, and leadership in the arts, to have them experience a concert like this.”

While the concert is billed as educational, Smelser said he think’s the experience is good for the soul.

“In this crazy day where just everything moves so fast, it’s nice for them to sit down for an hour and try to focus on something other than something electronic,” Smelser said. “Music is such a universal language. We all need it, and it kind of reaches all of us in different ways but it can really calm the soul and give us a chance to reflect.”