A groundbreaking music education initiative pioneered by Riverside Symphony has achieved stunning results and rapid growth since its introduction to New York City schools in 1999. The orchestra’s Music Memory program, designed to develop a lasting appreciation for fine music in young people, is a dynamic, multifaceted initiative comprising an innovative classroom learning method and an extraordinary annual Citywide Finals event.

The amazing achievement of the Riverside Symphony Music Memory project is testimony to the program’s powerful and engaging classroom learning program as well as the warmth and vitality of the year-end Riverside Symphony concert presentation under the direction of Maestro George Rothman.

Music Memory teaches children how to listen, and the results speak for themselves. In just ten years, word of mouth in education circles has helped the program more than triple to 60 New York City public schools representing over 8,000 third- through sixth-grade students throughout the five boroughs.

Noted educator Paula Bing offers the following:

"While I am involved in other arts education programs in New York, I find that the focus of Music Memory and the ensuing competition has, through its unique process, opened wide the world of classical music for classroom teachers and students alike. Not only is musical intelligence stimulated and developed, but visual, spatial, linguistic and bodily kinesthetic intelligences are also activated in the creative process of learning to feel, experience and identify some of the world’s great musical masterworks. The children are inspired to learn."

PROGRAM DETAILS

Music Memory fulfills a full school year’s curriculum. Each fall, students in two grade groupings (3-4 and 5-6) begin study of a fresh selection of 16 works representing a wide range of musical periods and styles, including orchestral, keyboard, choral, vocal, instrumental, opera and jazz compositions. Four full years in the program therefore offers a substantial overview of 64 timeless musical masterworks.

Calling upon the music itself to do the teaching, Music Memory develops listening skills, provides a link to explore the composers and their times, and also offers children the opportunity to express the music’s rhythmic, melodic and emotional content during interactive sessions. The aural-visual teaching materials, including recordings of the 16 pieces for school and home study and colorful listening maps, are created with painstaking care to insure both composer and music will be accessible to young listeners. Listening sessions are conducted in a peaceful, focused environment where neither teachers nor students speak while the music is played. This practice establishes rewarding and respectful listening habits for home or concert hall.

Music Memory culminates every spring at the Citywide Finals, a contest that recalls the popular “Name-that-Tune” show from early television days. Cheered on by parents and classmates, students are given the opportunity to show off their amazing listening and recognition skills, identifying the pieces and the composers of the 16 works they have studied throughout the year from musical fragments as brief as a single chord played onstage by Riverside Symphony. Their innate love of music, kindled in them throughout the school year on this unique musical voyage, is fired by the excitement of the competition.