May 13, 2004

Link-Up! program puts on classical concert for Chicago Public Schools

By Judy Moore

Many of the more than 1,000 participating Link-Up! Chicago Public School fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders coming to Northwestern for a special performance of Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9 (“From the New World”) at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall will experience their first live classical concert.

The Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra concert is the culmination of a six-week spring outreach based on a Carnegie Hall program.

The 10:30 a.m. Tuesday concert by the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by music faculty member Robert Hasty and narrated by Rachel Sokolow, associate for School Partnerships at Carnegie Hall in New York. It is the culmination of a pilot six-week spring outreach and music education initiative based on Carnegie Hall’s LinkUp! program.

This Chicago outreach effort is part of a collaboration between the School of Music, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, and the Ravinia Festival’s “One City, One Score” program.

The program is sponsored by Verizon and will directly benefit Chicago Public School students this spring. The LinkUp! program was created in New York to serve public schools in New York City and the greater New York City metropolitan area.

Three Northwestern Music Education Program faculty members — Scott Lipscomb and Maud Hickey, associate professors of music education and technology, and Peter Webster, associate dean for academic affairs and research — developed curricular materials for general classroom teachers, many without formal musical training, that were designed to teach basic musical concepts to elementary students.

The curricular materials that they developed have been printed and disseminated to more than 40 Chicago Public School teachers. These materials were created in addition to curriculum already provided by and utilized in Carnegie Hall’s LinkUp! program.

“Each lesson focuses on a specific aspect of melody, the chosen topic of focus, and includes creative activities that integrate the pleasure of listening to music with the excitement of creating it and sharing it with others,” said Lipscomb.

The materials incorporated excerpts from Dvorák’s Symphony No. 9, the composition selected for study by both the LinkUp! partnership and Ravinia’s “One City, One Score” programs.

Recently, Hickey, Lois Guderian, a music educational doctoral student, and Lipscomb team-taught a videoconference training session with Carnegie Hall staff in downtown Chicago, linking Carnegie Hall in New York City and Northwestern for the purpose of instructing participating teachers. The teachers represented more than 1,300 fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders from 14 Chicago Public Schools.

The participating schools in the pilot LinkUp! program are Benjamin Banneker Elementary School, Brown Academy, Jonathan Burr Elementary School, Carver Primary School, Crown Elementary School, Grover Cleveland School, John F. Eberhart School, Edwards Elementary School, Robert Healy Elementary School, Hearst Elementary School, John B. Murphy Elementary School, Overton Elementary School, Parkside Academy, and A.N. Pritzker School.