New Bedford Symphony Orchestra Teaching Science with Classical Music

July 11, 2019 5:33 pm

By: Tim Studebaker

NEW BEDFORD, MASS. (WLNE) – The New Bedford Symphony Orchestra has some pretty unique ideas when it comes to teaching science to kids. They’re connecting classical music with seemingly unrelated topics.

New Bedford Symphony Orchestra Education Director Terry Wolkowicz says, “Past concepts were balance in orchestration, and balance in the living parts of a salt marsh ecosystem… Gravity in musical tonality, and gravity in the orbital rates of planets in our solar system.”

This past school year, the program, called “Learning in Concert,” focused on the growing problem of plastic pollution. They taught concepts like reusing plastic items over and over by studying how Beethoven repeated musical ideas and notes in his works.

Wolkowicz says, “If we could just use those techniques that he used in composition, they actually apply nicely to the ways that we can reduce plastic pollution.”

They also studied repurposing a plastic item for a different use.

Wolkowicz says, “And composers do this, too. So they’ll take a musical idea, they’ll play it backwards, they’ll play it upside-down, they’ll add some parts to it.”

58 schools a year, both public and private in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, participate in the program. They focus mostly on third grade students. Next school year they’ll be studying the rhythmic patterns created by different animals when they move, like a horse galloping.

To learn more visit their website: www.newbedfordsymphony.org