Youngsters learn concert etiquette
Austin Strobbe-Barry, a fifth grader at Peterson sits forward and watches intently as he and fellow students listen to the Glacier Symphony on Friday at Flathead High School.
Kids from area schools packed the auditorium at Flathead High School on Friday as they attended the Glacier Symphony "Wild About Music" program.
Glacier Symphony and Chorale Music Director John Zoltek speaks to students about what they will hear and what they should be listening for as the symphony prepares to play a piece by Brahms.
As it turns out, being a good audience member takes work.
Holding in coughs and sneezes, resisting the urge to fidget and waiting until the end of a piece to applaud are difficult even for some adult audience members. When you’re 11 years old and at your first orchestra performance, following proper etiquette can be even more challenging.
That’s why music teacher David Klassy devoted time to teaching his students how to behave at a concert.
Students from his classes at Marion and Smith Valley schools put their training to use Friday morning at a “Wild About Music” concert by the Glacier Symphony.
Seven hundred students from across the valley were expected to attend the concert at Flathead High School, part of a series of youth concerts by the Glacier Symphony and Chorale.
The show included the full symphony — unusual for its youth series — and featured Whitefish native Jonas Van Dyke, now principal horn player with the Beijing Symphony. Van Dyke performed a French horn concerto for the students.
Klassy contributed three busloads of students to the audience — two buses of fourth- through eighth-grade students from Smith Valley School and one bus of fourth- through eighth-graders from Marion.
Klassy is a part-time music teacher at both schools.
While Klassy has taken scores of children to live performances throughout his career as music teacher, “I don’t ordinarily take this many grades,” he said.
Klassy taught in Plains eight years ago but is new to the Flathead Valley this year. He is a proponent of taking children to live performances but didn’t anticipate being able to share his appreciation for the symphony with students here.
“I have taught in other locales that have symphonies, but I was almost in doubt that we had anything like that here, especially for school-age children,” he said.
He was thrilled when he received information at the beginning of the year from the Glacier Symphony and Chorale about their youth-oriented concert series. The symphony has put on its Wild About Music concerts for at least eight years, said Marti Kurth, marketing and communications manager for the symphony.
“It is the main outreach program we do to schools,” she said.
The program exists to give kids “exposure to classical music they may not get in their everyday lives,” she added.
That exposure was part of the reason Klassy was so excited to find out about the concert series. Without such programs, he said, many youths wouldn’t have much exposure to music outside of school or the radio.
“It is important [to teach children] to appreciate, to value music while they’re still young, while their brains are still in that formational stage,” he said, adding that he wants to show students that “music isn’t just drums, guitar and a rock band in the garage.”
But exposing kids to music has another purpose, he added: “to understand that this is something that they, too, could pursue. ... This is another avenue you can take in life, especially if you’re not an athlete or not a genius in the academic world.”
To prepare his students for the concert, Klassy devoted class periods to proper concert etiquette. He and his class discussed the composers and historic events happening in the world during the Romantic period, when most pieces from the concert were written. He played YouTube clips of selections from a concert so students would know what to expect, things to listen for and when not to applaud.
“My schools don’t have the funding to have each of those instruments for me to demonstrate on,” said Klassy, who describes himself as a “performance-based” teacher. “So you resort to what you can. I feel it’s very important for kids to have some idea, something to draw on, something to watch for.”
Klassy knows this may be the only time some of his students will attend a symphony concert. That is one reason the symphony puts on the Wild About Music concerts, Kurth said, and why the symphony this year has started offering free tickets to Masterworks concerts for kids up through grade 12 if they’re accompanied by an adult.
“It’s important kids at least get the opportunity to see classical music,” she said. “What better way to start than in your own hometown?”
The next Wild About Music concert is scheduled Jan. 21, featuring a chamber ensemble of the Glacier Symphony. For additional information, visit www.gscmusic.org.
Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.