Students learn, play music together at fifth annual String Spectacular in Greenfield

GREENFIELD — About 70 elementary and middle school musicians from Strings for Kids and Música Franklin played in harmony over the weekend during the fifth annual String Spectacular at Greenfield High School.

“It’s really nice to see all the kids come together,” said cellist Julie Carew, the director of Strings for Kids and a teaching artist at Música Franklin who organized Saturday’s event with Orice Jenkins, executive director of Música Franklin.

The day kicked off at 12:30 with classes for singing, yoga and improvisational fiddling. Carew said the workshops encouraged students to tuck away their sheet music and follow their creative instincts instead.

“They’re just free to create with their instruments, which is really fun,” Carew said of the improv fiddling class, led by Strings for Kids teacher Rafe Wolman. “Some kids really don’t want to play unless they have music in front of them. That can be a safety net, playing something that somebody else wrote and that feels safe, but Rafe does improv with them in a way that allows them the space to create and not feel like they have to achieve something. There are no wrong answers.”

She described the ability to improvise as being just as pivotal as learning to play a piece of music back to an instructor.

“Just like when you learn a language, you can repeat something back that someone says to you, you can read something off the page, but you also have to learn how to speak with your own voice and your own songs,” Carew said. “It’s really important to allow them the space to do that, especially when they’re young, because if you wait until they’re adults, then they are very scared.”

After the workshops, the students took their spots on stage for the performance at 5 p.m. With an orchestra of roughly 70 musicians, Carew said kids told her, “I’ve never been on a big stage like this.”

For many of the students, the night also marked their first time playing with an eye on the conductor — guest conductor Gonzalo Hidalgo Ardila, director of orchestral studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Following Hidalgo Ardila, the elementary and middle schoolers performed several pieces they had prepared ahead of time at their after-school programs before hearing a symphony of 70 people.

Since its start five years ago, String Spectacular organizers have created a concert with one Western European classical piece, one fiddling piece, at least one pop-style piece and music from a Black composer. This year, students sang two spirituals and played works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Brazilian composer Felipe Vasconcelos, Puerto Rican musician and songwriter Tito Puente, Stevie Wonder and others.

“We’re trying to help [students] branch out away from just folk songs and classical music,” Carew said.

She stressed that exposing students to music and musicians from a range of racial and ethnic identities is always a priority for Strings for Kids. When teachers show students videos of performances, they ensure the orchestras include musicians of color.

“We want them playing music that they can identify with,” Carew said. With a racially diverse group of students and faculty behind the scenes, “We want to make sure that [students] see artists and play pieces by people that look like them.”

Saturday’s performance closed with the signature finale of each String Spectacular: “Twinkle Bell Canon,” which is a “spoof” of Pachelbel’s Canon. Instead of Pachelbel’s Canon, which requires cellists to pluck the same string of eight notes throughout the entire song, “Twinkle Bell Canon” includes six motives, or recurring melodies, of different difficulty levels for students to choose from.

“It makes it accessible for everyone,” Carew explained.