Paint, Poetry, and Movement to Music

One of the highlights of The Phoenix Symphony’s education program comes with the final Symphony for the Schools concert in the Spring of each year. For this concert, students who will be attending the performance have the opportunity to participate in the Paint,

Poetry, and Movement to Music contest. A couple of months before the concert, each class receives a CD containing the music which will be performed and they can choose to respond to that music with a painting, writing a poem about it, or creating an interpretive dance and filming their performance of it. Schools from all across the Valley participate and send their contest entries to The Phoenix Symphony.

This year, the poetry portion of the contest was to be written in response to Brahms’ Hungarian Dances No. 1. One of the winning poems was written by Alex, a 6th grader from Benchmark Academy:

Special thanks to ALL the students who entered the contest this year. Your creations are inspirations for us to keep making music that stirs the imagination!

For more information about Symphony for the Schools and how your school can attend, please visit the Education department’s section of The Phoenix Symphony’s website. We’ll leave you with one more of our favorite paintings from the contest, this one by Olivia, a 4th grader from Benchmark Academy: