Building a symphony for tomorrow: SoNA aims to support young musicians

The Symphony of Northwest Arkansas loves to perform for the well-dressed listeners who promenade into the Walton Arts Center and the Great Hall at Crystal Bridges. But SoNA also seeks to bring the symphony to a younger crowd who prefer Crocs and T-shirts.

In an attempt to shape the symphony members and fans of tomorrow, SoNA offers support to local schools and families by making it easier to bring young listeners to the symphony and vice versa through various educational and outreach programs.

One of the biggest efforts is the SoNA Mentors program, which was developed just before covid protocols locked down schools. Executive Director Ben Harris explained that the program sends a musician from the symphony to the classroom to work as a sort of teacher’s aide by helping provide focused instruction to band students.

“We do all that at the direction of their teachers,” Harris said. They don’t come in with a pre-set lesson plan or curriculum so that they don’t affect the band director’s teaching time.

“That’s difficult for teachers because they have so many metrics that they have to hit,” Harris said.

The program began with six mentors offering instruction on violin, viola, cello and bass. Now there are 10 mentors and instruction has expanded to include flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, saxophone, trumpet, horn, trombone, tuba and percussion for students at 10 local schools.

The small group instruction offers the students a more thorough learning experience and allows the mentor to account for individualized learning styles, said Mary Kelly, director of orchestras at Bentonville West. Big group class teaching versus individual instruction differs in approach.

“When you are in a group, you kind of have to look at the whole class as one person,” Kelly said. “The mentor teacher can actually see specifically how that child learns and caters the instruction to their specific learning style. Whereas in a group, I have to cycle through things, and so sometimes there are holes” in their knowledge.

Bringing in a professional musician who is trained in a specific instrument offers insight that the instructor may not have.

“As a teacher/conductor of a school group, while I am trained on all the instruments, I am not trained to the highest level as some of our SoNA mentors on cello and bass,” added Karol Rulli, orchestra director for Rogers Public Schools and part of SoNA’s second violin section.

Natalie Fernandez, director of education and personnel for SoNA, likens the difference in instruments to trying to teach Italian, English, French and Spanish in the same room at the same time. The four most common instruments in the string family — violin, viola, cello and bass — aren’t as alike as they seem.

While they all have strings, they read in different clefs. “They all have different bass pitches on their strings,” she said. “There’s so many different things that add a certain technical level.”

By focusing attention on individual instruments, some students are also able to access specialized instruction that they may not be able to afford through private lessons.

Rulli said many of her students do not take private lessons outside of school, but the mentor program has provided high-level

instruction for them and pushed many to pursue private lessons as they are able.

“It is because of their help many of my students have achieved placement in our region and state events,” she said. “In addition, the mentor help has been noticeable in the instrument sections in my groups.”

Sometimes just having another instructor come in reinforces concepts that teachers and parents have been trumpeting all along.

“It’s like when mom gives you advice,” Fernandez said. “I don’t want to listen to my mom but if your cool aunt or that lady who works with your neighbor is coming in and giving you the exact same advice, for some reason, it carries a little bit different weight.”

Kelly said she’s seen that change in her own band room with students who don’t like to practice scales. Even though she warned them that avoiding it makes learning music more difficult, she still couldn’t get them to practice. However when the mentors practice scales with the students — “especially if that person is from SoNA,” she said, “there’s kind of a gravitas connected to it.

“They’ve gotten more motivated and a lot of them now [if] a scale test is coming up, they ask if they can work with the mentor teachers so that they can do better on their their tests.”

Beyond test scores, SoNA hosts outreach concerts for student instrumentalists and recently launched a Student Musician Council from that group. Fernandez said that their feedback is valuable and that students do not want to be pandered to with movie or video game themes.

“They’re like, ‘No if you’re a professional musician, we want to really hear you play the standard classical literature and really play the snot out of it,’” she said. “I’m sure their teachers play them recordings or give them links to recordings, but it’s just a different situation altogether to watch people on stage who live in your town and [who] are mentors that go into these schools and work with these students. They’re getting a chance to see the people who are working with them put their money where their mouth is.”

“The human element of it can’t be understated because even when you’re watching a recorded performance, even though it’s human beings doing it, it’s not happening in real-time,” Harris pointed out. “You can feel their intensity you can feel their nerves, all of that. And that’s the beauty of live music.”

For students who are serious about the symphony, SoNA invites students to sit in on open rehearsals. It immerses the students in the experience of performing with a professional symphony by placing them in the seats next to the symphony members while they learn to perform a concert together.

“The open rehearsal was fantastic for the students to see how a professional organization operates and the very high level of the rehearsals,” Rulli said. Out of her four students who were invited to sit next to the orchestra during the rehearsal, three are now planning to major in music when in college.

“It was wonderful to see how my students interacted with the musicians and for them to get to see how the rehearsals flow,” she said.

Kelly said that the open rehearsals were an eye-opener for students who are used to the high school orchestra rehearsals.

“I think they understand how etiquette is huge,” she said. “At school, it tends to be noisy and things are kind of like a little bit chaotic, but then they go into a professional environment and they see that you don’t talk (or play music) when the conductor is talking.”

Then there are more practical things.

“One of the students realized that while the orchestra was playing, you could stop playing yourself and make markings on the music if you missed a bowing or a fingering and you need to write it in while the orchestra continues to play,” she said.

The open rehearsals are similar to when a student shadows a professional for a day, though Kelly said music has in some ways has gotten away from an internship or apprenticeship model.

Outside of school-related happenings, SoNA also offers free tickets to patrons younger than 18 for each of their mainstage events like the April 6 performance of Ode To Joy: Beethoven’s Ninth. The Free Tickets for Youth program is supported by the Baum Foundation.

“If you’ve got three kids and want a night out at the symphony ... to be able to say ‘Well, we just have to buy mom and dad’s ticket, and then our three kids can come with us for free,’ I mean, that’s incredible,” Fernandez said.

The free youth concerts and educational outreach are part of SoNA’s mission to make the symphony accessible to everyone.

“We’re trying to break down the stigma that going a night of the symphony is only for people who are going to wear their tux and who have their fur coat and have lots of money,” she said. There’s no dress code, they just want people to show up and listen. “You’re gonna see everything you’re gonna see jeans and boat shoes, and you’re gonna see somebody in a fur coat. You’re gonna see both. We’re just so happy to have you in our doors and in our seats.”

Monica Hooper is a features writer and podcast host for the NWA and River Valley Democrat-Gazette. She loves sharing stories about artists, dancers, music makers and all sorts of interesting folks. She can be reached at mhooper@nwaonline.com.

(Submitted Photo/Natalie Fernandez) SoNA violinist Will Bush leads small group instruction for high school students in the orchestra as part of the SoNA Mentors program. Professional musicians from The Symphony of Northwest Arkansas go into classrooms and work essentially as teacher’s aides by providing instruction to students based on their specific instrument.

(Submitted Photo/Natalie Fernandez) “When you listen to an orchestra rehearse with an empty theater, it’s an entirely different experience than listening to them play with a full theater and it’s not just because they’re nervous … It’s everything that all of those audience members bring into the hall with them,” said SoNA Executive Director Ben Harris. “Any actor that does work on the stage will tell you that even in a show that they’ve done dozens of times before, every performance is different because the audience.”