WSO Children

The Windsor Symphony Orchestra has provided music for children and many opportunities for children and teens to play and perform with the orchestra. 

“Young People’s Concerts” were announced as part of the regular season in the 1962-63 season brochure, with concerts held on Saturday mornings at the Cleary Auditorium.  Sponsored by the Women’s Symphony Association, these special concerts continued through the decades. Matti Holli announced his intention to introduce youth to Canadian and American composers. Young people’s concerts by the WSO have continued to offer a balance of classical and contemporary music.

Concert programs varied, with selections and special guests ranging from the music of Humperdinck, Hansel and Gretel with the Frances Kay Puppets in 1976, to Sharon, Lois and Bram in 1986.  Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals is a popular selection, but one composition recurs through the years: Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. 

Peter and the Wolf combines orchestral work and narration which introduces the various instruments and sounds of the orchestra.  The WSO has offered several different interpretations of this classic through the ages, sometimes using puppets, and sometimes with local dance groups.  Several celebrities have narrated for the WSO, including Jim Crichton, and the late Sonny Eliot, both local news anchors, and Stratford actor Colm Feore, who also recorded the narration on the orchestra’s CD.  During one memorable Family Jamboree performance, conductor John Morris Russell asked the orchestra to dress in colour-coded shirts in order to indicate each orchestra section. 

Audience participation is always encouraged now at children’s concerts, especially during the holidays and at Halloween when the audience was encouraged to dress up, too!  The Dia de los Muertos concert in 2007 featured Join Hands Puppeteers and local dancers to commemorate the Mexican Day of the Dead and Hallowe’en.  Blending classical music, science and fantasy, the WSO performed a Symphony in Space concert in 2007, with footage from NASA, and featuring 35 young violinists.

Contemporary music helps to draw children into the music, such as a version of the Australian Kookabura Song by Marion Sinclair performed in 2003 sung by the audience as a round, with Dave Odette on the didgeridoo, an Australian aboriginal wind instrument.   Assistant conductor Peter Wiebe is one of the orchestra members who has arranged and composed music especially for the young people’s concerts (see video in Composers).

Peanut Butter n’ Jam for ages 2 – 5 are a recent addition to the WSO events, with small ensembles performing half hour concerts at various locations around the city, including the Nikola Budimir Branch of the Windsor Public Library.  These introduce children to music, both classical and contemporary. Hand movements and action songs are compulsory!

The early WSO relied on teenaged music students to perform as soloists – then playing to gain experience rather than for the small honorarium offered at the time. Gifted students took part in classical concerts, such as violinists Scott and Lara St. John, who have been guests of the WSO since they were 10 and 12.  Hugh Dowell was a treble singer at age 12 when he performed in Handel’s Elijah in 1997 and now plays the bagpipes as an adult.  Children from dance groups have had the unique opportunity to perform with the WSO. 

In a moving letter to the Windsor Star in 2007, Melanie Paul Tanovich paid tribute to the WSO’s gift to children:

…children deserve to appreciate music as much as adults.  Children who attend these concerts will go on to attend musical events as adults.  These concerts expose children to a unique and exhilarating art form.  They inspire children, they do to children what music of any sort does to all of us: lifts our spirits, sympathizes with our emotions, makes us think, makes us move, incites us to contemplate the status quo, connects us with nature and with each other.  Music is food for the brain and soul.” (May 1 2007)