Front Row Center

T. Julie-Ann and students at Carmen

Friends School Middle School students were literally front-row center at the opera in Philadelphia on Wednesday afternoon.  Thanks to the wonderful connection by our MS Chorus teacher and Fine & Performing Arts Program Director Julie-Ann Green, who performed as part of the chorus, we were at the front of the house of some 2,000-school students to see the final dress rehearsal for Carmen.   Our students were fully engaged and by the time the curtain call arrived cheered loudly with the rest of the crowd, reflecting clear appreciation for the spectacular presentation they had just seen, and the talent and effort exerted by the cast and orchestra to tell the story of Carmen so movingly.

This trip was another expression of our hands-on learning philosophy, and one that particularly highlights the importance we see in music education.  Every student at Friends School takes applied music instruction as part of his or her program.  It may be Music Together, violin, recorder or chorus.  All students get opportunities to prepare for and then perform in public.  In Middle School this also includes a high level of student participation in the spring musical.  This is all supplemented with the Fine & Performing Art Program that offers music lessons to many of our students and to others in the community.

Google "music and brain development" if you’d like to explore the benefits of music instruction on brain development for young people.  Researchers posit that it has a beneficial impact on memory, visual-spatial development, and possibly verbal and mathematical strengths.  There is far more to be learned.  We do know without performing brain scans that students learn discipline and teamwork, as well as appreciation for a new way they can express themselves and how others may communicate to them feelings ranging from profound grief to ecstasy.   Yesterday’s trip to hear and see Carmen was certainly a powerful lesson, very likely to be retained, that reinforced these concepts.  And it was FUN!