William Boughton had slid into the lilt and lift of Aaron Copland’s Rodeo before. He knew what to expect from the piece: a beginning filled with ebullient strings, a flutter of hoof sounds springing from seemingly nowhere, a fake-out ending that got someone in the audience every single time.
But as the sun rose higher and higher in Wednesday’s mid-morning sky, something was different. Myriad new faces poured into Woolsey Hall, a suite of small bodies slipping into its creaking seats just before 9:30 a.m. This was a new constituent base, one that couldn’t quite stay still and found itself prone to clapping at unexpected intervals and those tricky false finishes.
To Boughton, smiling from the stage as he conducted, that was perfectly okay. Even ideal. After all, it meant that they were listening.
Lucy Gellman Photo
Wednesday morning marked the 83rd annual Young People’s Concert for the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, which Boughton has gracefully steered through some challenging and delightful concerts and public programs this year. Based on “A Celebration of American Music and Jazz,” this year’s concert brought New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) students to Woolsey Hall, the NHSO’s regular stomping grounds, for two free Wednesday morning concerts, drawing a crowd of around 3,550 students. Repeat performances this week and next around the state will bring that number to 10,000.
The organization’s hope is twofold: to expose students in New Haven and around Connecticut to the opportunities manifest in music, and to better represent themselves as a resource to the community that families may not otherwise know to tap into.
Wishing to ease students in, Boughton and NHSO Education Director Laura Adam took a straightforward, step-by-step approach, explaining both the overarching themes and musical intricacies in each piece. In doing so, they sketched out a sort of aural road map to which students could refer when they were listening. And it worked: students leaned forward in their seats, pursed their lips, deep in concentration, and opened their ears.
Were students wondering where that false ending was in Rodeo? They just had to wait for Maestro Boughton to draw that finger mischievously to his lips. Did they find too many discordant moments in Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings? They only had to consider the importance of silence in the piece, and watch how suddenly those musical clashes resolved themselves. Did they want to try to play a trombone? It would help if they pursed their lips and started buzzing like the biggest bumblebee they’d ever seen.
That extended to Adam’s belief that there was no wrong way for students to listen: it was more important that they were listening at all. As orchestral music has had to compete with the trappings of the digital age — not to mention a growing socioeconomic gap that often translates to limited access to the arts — getting students to the music, and the music to them, is clearing one monumental hurdle.
“Think about this,” Adam said as the musicians behind her prepared to launch into the Barber. “Music can often take on meaning for us as listeners that is different from what the composer originally imagined. Music is alive — it changes each time it is played. Every person that listens to it imagines different things and hears different things making it special for each one of us.”
Students also got a treat in the form of Artist-in-Residence Chris Brubeck, who was joined by Aaron Michelle on drums from Wilbur Cross and Joseph Boughton on trumpet from Guilford High School. While an excerpt from Brubeck’s Concerto for Bass Trombone & Orchestra and a crash course in the legacy of jazz (did you know Bach and Mozart were the jazz musicians of their time?) had some students swinging in their seats, the presence of Michelle and Boughton showed just some of the musical feats of which NHPS students are capable.
“These students aren’t that much older than you … you could be up here one day too,” said Brubeck. A few smiles and giggles popped up around the room, reaching him as he let out a deep chuckle. Then he turned back to the music, licked his lips, and began to play one last tune.
