Karen Kistler
karen.kistler@salisburypost.com

 

SALISBURY — Providing music education to young people is an important part of the mission of the Salisbury Symphony.

In fact, the symphony’s mission statement, as noted on their website, lists education, along with entertaining, inspiring, engaging and enriching as what they seek to do for the community. 

In a release from Beth Cook, education director for the Salisbury Symphony Orchestra, she said that education is especially important for young people because “many of today’s brilliant professional musicians began when they were students.”

Being a strong supporter of the orchestra’s mission, the Symphony Guild sponsored a fundraiser to benefit one of their education programs, the After School Strings program, by providing new music stands for the students.

Using the theme of “Stand Up for Music,” the guild held a Mondi Gras Party and asked guests to sponsor the purchase of a stand for the students.

“The goal was to raise funds for 12 new stands,” said Cook in the release, “but many individuals, recognizing the importance of supporting the young musicians enrolled in this program, generously donated enough for 30 new stands.”

As noted on the symphony’s website, the After School Strings programs offers instruction twice a week for 45 minutes for beginning and intermediate violin, viola and cello students ages eight and older. Instruction is offered in a group setting and is held on Mondays and Wednesdays at Granite Quarry Elementary School and Mondays and Thursdays at West Rowan Elementary School.

Instructors of the program are Kate Middel, symphony orchestra violinist, who teaches at Granite Quarry, and Hope Craig, who plays violin and is on the summer music camp staff, teaches at West Rowan. Between the two sites, they teach 26 young musicians.

The stands that the students had been using, it was noted in the release, were older, thin, wire ones and had “a tendency to fall over at the most inopportune time, hence the nickname ‘fainting stands.’”

Craig said that the new stands would “allow the students to be more focused during instruction since they don’t have to stop in the middle of class to fix stands.”

Many of the students themselves joked about the old stands fainting and now they would not have to worry about them doing that during rehearsals or performances.

The After School Strings musicians and the Salisbury Symphony Youth Orchestra will join together to perform a Spring Gala concert on Sunday, May 4 at 3 p.m. in Varick Auditorium on the campus of Livingstone College. The public is invited to attend.