KINDER KONZERTS™
Yellow school buses lined up back to back outside Orchestra Hall is exactly the image you see on Kinder Konzerts in the Hall™ days. The Hall becomes a learning laboratory featuring hands-on activities for children to feel and hear sounds of instruments, watch musicians tell a story through music, and learn how to become audience members. For many children this is their first exposure to classical music and Orchestra Hall.
Recently, we also introduced Kinder Konzerts Out & About™ to bring our trained educators directly to the classrooms to engage young students in the joy of music in their own settings.
Kinder Konzerts on the Road™ is an extension and enrichment of Kinder Konzerts at Orchestra Hall.™ It is an in-school, in-classroom residency program taught by a skilled FRIENDS teaching artist brought directly to under-resourced pre-kindergarten, kindergarten and first grade students in our Twin Cities communities. It is designed to positively impact and assist younger students, connecting music and musical concepts to literacy. The culminating event is an ensemble of Minnesota Orchestra musicians coming to the school to perform for the students, staff and parents. This program received the League of American Orchestra’s Gold Award for outstanding volunteer programming in multiple years, most recently in 2018.
KINDER KONZERT™ PROGRAMS
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Kinder Konzerts in the Hall™
Take a field trip to Orchestra Hall
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Kinder Konzerts Out & About™
Kinder Konzerts™ goes to libraries and daycare facilities.
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Kinder Konzerts on the Road™/Artist Residency
Kinder Konzerts™ goes to schools
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Kinder Konzert™ Resources for Educators & Volunteers
Materials to support educators & volunteers
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Kinder Konzerts™ History
A look back at Kinder Konzerts™ since 1979.
We thoroughly enjoyed our trip and the parents that came with us talked about how impressed they were with the whole program. Also, I cannot say enough positive things about Vicki and Laurie our guides. They were both delightful to work with and the kids are still talking about them! It's obvious they love what they're doing!
The educator guide was very helpful in planning my lessons and I appreciated knowing what instruments were being featured so we could prepare our students. The hands on lab was amazing and the students asked if next time we could have a musician bring in one of the instruments (specifically the bassoon) so we could see it "very very close."
Both parts of the program helped the children develop a love of music, the class has been asking me to find more examples of each instrument to listen to during play time.
We typically read Max Found Two Sticks during our creativity unit which starts in February (our district has our own curriculum). We spent a week focusing on the book, the instruments and things from the educator guide. We were able to connect with some of the 5th grade band members to see the instruments up close and in action in real time before our trip to Orchestra Hall. It was a great way to practice being the audience.
This is one of my favorite field venues and I've probably been to Kinder Konzerts about 15 times in my 30 years, I LOVE IT. Keep up the great work!
~Megan Quiggle, Northview PreK
Katie was so great. She knew her audience and taught to their level. She obviously has lots of experience with preschoolers! The kids loved the story and trying the instruments.
~Kinder Konzert Out & About School
We were so impressed with KK Out & About! We loved how she (Katie) exposed them to so many different instruments, kept students constantly engaged (sitting/standing/moving), introduced many different musical concepts and correlated it to reading and telling stories as well. They loved being able to play all of the instruments. We loved it- thank you!
~Kinder Konzert Out & About School
I loved the program. I thought Katie did a wonderful job and having Daniel here was a wonderful bonus. I don't know that I was able to full express how beautiful his music was and how well it fit the feel of the story. I was so impressed with how well Katie did with all of our very young story time participants, most of them were under three years of age. I thought we might have 20 kids, but we had 32. She captured their attention and had most of them up and moving with her. It was just wonderful and I know the kids learned a great deal of new vocabulary. They also learned about musical instruments and it was wonderful to see some of them really interested in the violin. Thank you so much for traveling to us to present this program.
~Kinder Konzert Out & About School