Link Up
March 7, 2024  9:30am & 11:00am

New York City’s Carnegie Hall Weill Music Institute created the Link Up program as part of a project to encourage students ranging from 3rd to 5th grade to participate in music education by teaming up with local symphonies. 

These students are given the opportunity to join the orchestra in this highly participatory program, in which they learn to sing and play an instrument in their school classroom and then come perform with a professional orchestra from their seats at a culminating concert. Every March, over 2,400 4th graders from throughout Southeast Idaho who have spent the year learning to play recorders and sing melodies join the Idaho State-Civic Symphony in a culminating side-by-side performance at the Stephens Performing Arts Center.  The ISCS participates in Link Up to further its goals of encouraging interest in music education, appreciation, and performance.
This year students and the symphony will perform the Orchestra Swings curriculum, which includes the following musical selections:
• Thomas Cabaniss’s “Come to Play”
• George Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm”
• Duke Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)”
• Florence Price’s “Juba” from Symphony No. 1
• Leonard Bernstein’s “Riffs” from Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs
• “When the Saints Go Marching In”
• Courtney Bryan’s “Do Your Thing”

Link Up: The Orchestra Swings
“Swing” is many things. It’s a distinctive rhythmic feel; a musical era dominated by big band jazz; a style of dance that grew alongside the music; and that elusive but unmistakable feeling that results when musicians are deeply tuned into each other and playing in sync, or “in the pocket”. Through the Link Up repertoire, hands-on activities, and a culminating interactive performance with the Idaho State-Civic Symphony and jazz ensemble, students will explore the elements that contribute to that magical moment when the orchestra starts to swing.

Support for Link Up is provided by the Idaho Commission on the Arts through the Arts Education Annual Projects grant program.