“ ‘This is a valley,’ says Andrew Bales, president and executive director of Symphony Silicon Valley, ‘built by people heavily invested in STEM,’ … referring to the acronym for school curricula based in science, technology, engineering, and math,” writes Jeff Kaliss in Friday’s (3/8) San Francisco Classical Voice. “ ‘We’d rather go with STEAM,’ Bales continues, ‘but the companies that support our school programs leave the A—the arts and creativity—out.’ In 2011, Bales founded the ArtSPARK program … targeting the underserved portion of the County’s demographic, primarily minorities from low-income homes. On March 19 and 20, ArtSPARK will bus some 4,500 fourth graders … to the California Theatre in downtown San José, where Maestro Peter Jaffe and members of the Symphony Silicon Valley will lead them in a program titled ‘It’s About Time: Music, Math & More.’… [Jaffe] takes it out to 5/4—the Mission Impossible theme—and 7/4 time with a Dave Brubeck jazz rhythm…. ArtSPARK provides teachers with vetted curriculum-based materials and referrals to web-based and other resources.” Says Bales, “You have any number of the youth orchestras in the area which have students whose first [musical] interaction was in one of our programs.”
Posted March 14, 2019
In photo: Students attending an ArtSPARK event with Symphony Silicon Valley
