At Dan Mills Elementary School (today/yesterday), forty fourth-graders gave their full attention (sound of clarinet begins) to Nashville Symphony clarinetist Dan Lochrie playing music from “Peter and the Wolf:”
kids: “A wolf!”
Lochrie: “No.”
Kids: “A cat?”
Lochrie: “Cat. Right. It does kind of sound like a cat, creeping through the grass, right? A little mischievous cat.”
It was the first in a series of master classes from the symphony’s “One Note, One Neighborhood” project, a five-year pilot program at the eight schools of the Stratford Cluster. There will also be concerts for students, training for teachers, and for kids who are especially interested in music, two or three lessons per week at the W. O. Smith Music School.
W. O. Smith director Jonah Rabinowitz says he’s pleased with how comprehensive the plans are.
“I think that what makes this program so unique is there’s really not anybody who’s associated with these schools in the cluster who won’t be affected by the program, and we’re going to see the kind of growth and things that arts can do in schools in a microcosm.”
The pilot project will last five years. If it’s successful, it will expand to other Middle Tennessee neighborhoods.
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