Welcome to The Orchestra Sings!
Melody is one of the universal elements of music and defines the music we know and love. A great melody can express ideas and emotions, help tell a story, and bring people together through song. Composers create melodies through a combination of rhythmic patterns, sweeping contours, and expressive qualities. Through the Link Up repertoire, hands-on activities, and a culminating interactive performance with a professional orchestra, we will explore what makes a melody great.
Link Up, a program of Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute, guides students and teachers in grades 3–5 through an exploration of orchestral repertoire through a hands-on music curriculum. Students will sing and play soprano recorder while learning basic musical concepts and play along with the Modesto Symphony Orchestra (MSO) in a culminating concert. With the MSO, over 14,000 third through fifth grade students have participated in Link Up since 2015. Since 2017, all third-grade classes of Modesto City Schools have participated in the program. Over forty other local schools have participated in Link Up, from three counties (Stanislaus, San Joaquin, and Merced). MSYO students are also selected to perform side-by-side with the MSO for the performance adding an extra tier to the educational benefits of Link Up.
Common Core State Standards Initiative
Through hands-on activities and a culminating interactive performance with a professional orchestra, Link Up helps to address the Common Core State Standards, empowering students through learning activities that emphasize college and career readiness and help students
- demonstrate independence
- build strong content knowledge
- respond to the varying demands of audience, task, purpose, and discipline
- comprehend and critique
- value evidence
- use technology and digital media strategically and capably
- come to understand other perspectives and cultures
While the Link Up curriculum focuses primarily on music performance skills, content knowledge, and creativity, students also build core capacities in English and math. Through composition, active listening, describing and analyzing standard repertoire, and a focus on the historical context of orchestral music, Link Up provides students with the opportunity to put these core capacities to use in a new domain. Specific activities throughout the curriculum also address these English and math capacities directly, encouraging reading, writing, and quantitative thinking.
This performance is presented by the Modesto Symphony Orchestra, a Resident Company of the Gallo Center for the Arts, learn more at https://www.modestosymphony.org/
