“The New Bedford Symphony Orchestra (NBSO) and the Elizabeth Taber Library teamed up to offer Symphony Tales, a music and literacy program for preschool children” on Saturday, writes Chris Reagle in Friday’s (3/21) Wicked Local (Marion, Mass.). “The Symphony Tales program is designed to reinforce the fundamental literacy skills that children need in order to become strong readers, explained Terry Wolkowicz, the education coordinator for the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra. This concept of linking the prosody in text and music is based on current findings in cognitive psychology that show that music and language have a shared neural perception system and have strong similarities in syntax and semantics processing, she said.… NBSO Conductor and Music Director Dr. David MacKenzie composed the music specifically to imitate the prosodic elements of the text, such as stress, pitch, contour, rhythm and tempo. With NBSO second principal violinist Emmy Holmes-Hicks playing the violin, the children giggled and smiled as they heard their names played on the stringed instrument.… Following the performance, the children participated in two interactive activities, including holding and attempting to play a pint-sized violin.”
Posted March 24, 2014
