As the nation's eleventh largest school district, Dallas Independent School District serves more than 160,000 students who come from homes where 58 different languages are spoken. Operating with a $1 billion dollar budget, DISD employs 18,613 employees including 10,000 teachers in 220 schools.
6 Apr 2001
Dallas Symphony Orchestra Continues Tradition of Exposing Area Students to Classical Music
In 1948, John F. Reagan Elementary School students Connie Chastain and Dottie Coleman attended Dallas Symphony Orchestra youth concerts with their classmates. On Wednesday, April 11, 2001, Connie (now Connie Beam) and Dottie (now Dottie Neal) will again attend a Dallas Symphony Orchestra youth concert. And they will join current students from the Oak Cliff elementary school.
As students at Reagan Elementary in the 40's, Beam and Neal looked forward with great anticipation to their yearly field trips to the Dallas Symphony youth concerts. When Beam and Neal were in 6th grade, they participated in an art contest sponsored by the Dallas Symphony and Dallas schools. Their artwork, completed with the help of another Reagan student, Bobby King, won the competition and was featured in The Dallas Morning News. The art, recently "re-discovered" under Neal's bed and proudly displayed at a class reunion, depicts their impressions of the Dallas Symphony music they heard.
At the reunion, the classmates fondly remembered their trips to the symphony and the art contest that made them famous within their school. Then, Neal presented the framed worked to Beam as a gift to pass on to her grandchildren. Following the reunion, Beam called LeAnn Binford, the symphony's director of education to share the story. Binford invited Beam and Coleman to attend the April concert with the current Reagan students. Current Reagan Elementary Principal Lucy Davila-Hakemack, along with the school's art teacher and after-school music teacher, will also attend. For the occasion, there will be a special breakfast for the former and current students where the "famous" artwork will be on display. It is certain that Dallas Symphony concerts past and present will be compared.
Although several things have changed since Coleman and Beam attended youth concerts as students from the Oak Cliff school, several things have remained consistent. The concerts remain an entertaining and informative way to learn about music - they teach children about how instruments fall into distinct families and explore the unique expressive character of each instrument, they learn about composers and famous compositions and actively involve youngsters in the concert-going experience. Of course, the venue and public transportation have changed @ students today get to the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center by way of DART. In 1948, Beam and Coleman traveled to Fair Park courtesy of streetcars. In 1948, the music director was flamboyant Hungarian Antal Dorati. Today, of course, it is Andrew Litton, one of but a handful of Americans leading a major American orchestra.
The breakfast with Reagan Elementary 1st graders, staff, Beam and Cole will take place at 8:45 a.m. on Wednesday, April 11, 2001, in Opus Restaurant in the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. The youth concert, titled "Musical Families," begins at 9:30 a.m. and is for students in grades Pre-K through 2 nd. It will examine how instruments are used in styles which are familiar to students and how these instruments are used in the orchestra.
Press is invited to attend the breakfast prior to the concert and speak with Reagan Elementary students, Beam and Cole. For more information, please contact the media relations staff at 214-871-4061.
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