CFK Podcast: Schoolhouse Symphony Spotlight

Ana Smith (0:07)

Hello, and welcome to Classics For Kids. My name is Ana Smith, coming to you from the Cincinnati Public Radio in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm joined today by the Schoolhouse Symphony, a six-member ensemble that is celebrating 50 years of performing in preschools, elementary schools, and middle schools in and around Cincinnati since 1976

Today, the ensemble is comprised of Lottie Roper on French horn, Gin Hand on flute, Karen McDowell on violin, Nora Barton on cello, Glenn Proffitt on bass trombone, and Laura Sabo on clarinet. The collective musical experience spans both coasts of North America, as well as Europe, Asia, and Australia. Today, we discuss the history of the Schoolhouse Symphony and their mission to educate students around Cincinnati about instrumental music. Schoolhouse Symphony, how are we doing today?

SPEAKER_2 (0:57)

Good!

Ana Smith (0:59)

Glad to be here. It's so great to have you here. So, tell me a bit more about what you all do.

SPEAKER_4 (1:04)

Schoolhouse Symphony, as you've introduced us, is a six-member ensemble, and we do educational concerts in Cincinnati area schools.

We play for roughly 70 different schools every year, and really what makes this ensemble different than most other ensembles of this type is that we visit schools multiple times per year. So, though we play 70 schools, we do over 200 performances every school year.

Ana Smith (1:32)

That's really, really impressive. What do your lessons tend to look like when you go to the schools?

SPEAKER_2 (1:37)

We have a bunch of different programs that we would offer. For preschool, it's usually a sequence of three different levels. The first is introduction to the instruments. The second talks about instrument families and how we get vibrations on the instrument and the third is ties everything together and is a story show.

We have a lot of great stories with great music that's very popular and very fun for us to do. For elementary shows, we have a more elementary-aged introduction to the instruments that includes families and how we get vibrations. Then we have shows like, we have a two-part American music show. The first goes from the time of the pilgrims up through ragtime in the early 1900s, and the second one picks up ragtime and goes all the way up to rock and roll, includes a lot of jazz and blues. And then we have things like form and music, notation. We have a time machine show that's very interactive. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_4 (2:36)

The time machine show is particularly fun because it's random. The kids push a button and it randomizes where we're gonna go.

So we start, the first thing they could hear would be Gregorian chant. And the last thing they might hear is movie music. So it's a real mixture and we try to take the kids to that place and time and sort of give an idea of not only this is what the music sounded like, but also what it would be like. We have one of the stops on that time machine show was 1250 And so you've arrived in an English village. And one of the things musicians did is not only they show up and play music, but they also kind of told you what was going on to the neighboring town because it might not be so safe to travel in those days.

Ana Smith (3:11)

Yeah, yeah, your classic like bard archetype. So walk me through your history as a group. How'd you get started?

SPEAKER_3 (3:17)

So there was a gentleman named James Ritz, who was a music teacher in a school system. And he wanted to jazz up his music education for his kids so they wouldn't be bored. And he had some of his friends come and do some shows together. Like they put together a show for the kids and the kids loved it.

So they did another one and they loved it even more. So eventually he started sending those shows to everybody else. And he quit his job and started Schoolhouse Symphony. Wow, that was 1976

Ana Smith (3:47)

So how has it grown since then?

SPEAKER_4 (3:49)

Jim left before my tenure started, which was in 1995 And so I can't speak to the earliest days of Schoolhouse Symphony, but I can speak for the last 31

And growing is kind of a hard thing to say. We try to keep our shows fresh, updated, new music. We try to reach as many different kids as we can.

As you well know, arts funding is challenging. So Schoolhouse Symphony has really changed its funding model over the last 30 years. When I first joined the group, we received money from the Ohio Arts Council, and that was the only outside funding this group received, other than donations. So schools were actually paying for the shows. But over the last 20 plus years, that kind of funding has become harder and harder for the schools to acquire. And so we were very fortunate that organizations such as the Charles H. Dater Foundation, Louise Diddle Independent Musical Arts Fund, William O. Purdy Junior Foundation, and I don't mean to leave any organizations out to support us, but they have come forward. And so we actually have not raised prices in over 15 years.