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April 20, 2008

An Elementary Lesson in Classical Music

Nelson Hernandez:

If music hath charms to soothe the savage breast, as the English dramatist William Congreve wrote about three centuries ago, yesterday it did something even more remarkable: It quieted a concert hall packed with 2,500 fourth-graders.

The young students, vibrating with energy, were from Prince George's County. For the first time, the county has sent all of its fourth-graders to a series of concerts at the Kennedy Center this week in a partnership with the National Symphony Orchestra.

All meaning 8,000.

Before the concert began, the students were making music of their own. After leaving scores of school buses waiting outside in the parking lot, the students marveled at the center's flag-draped Hall of Nations. One group of seven singing girls from Port Towns Elementary School in Bladensburg, holding hands in a circle, played a clapping game in time with a ditty about "The Simpsons."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 20, 2008 12:30 AM
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