Classical music, classroom help

Twenty Fresno schoolteachers were learning last week how to integrate classical music into such core subjects as math, science and history, thanks to a new pilot music education program developed by the San Francisco Symphony. The effort is part of a $23-million orchestra project called “Keeping Score,” which also includes television and radio programming, websites and community outreach projects.

“The goal is to provide people with a connection with classical music and also a connection to the powerful emotions that are contained in classical music,” says John Kieser, the orchestra’s director of operations and electronic media.

“We had a gentleman using cowboy music to teach history. Why were cowboys necessary? What was their role in society? What is cowboy music? All that is taken into a larger societal picture.

“Then you have composer Aaron Copland, who tried to put together the ‘American’ sound -- a blend of cowboy music, jazz, Yiddish music, music from Mexico or Cuba -- all synthesized into his work.”

As for music itself, “the structure is mathematical,” Kieser says. “All time signatures are essentially fractions.”

The $2.5-million start-up of the program was funded by the James Irvine Foundation and the Walter & Elise Haas Fund. The program will start benefiting students in September, with plans calling for it to initially reach 600 to 700 youths.

“We chose Fresno because it has great diversity in just about every way -- urban, rural, economic and ethnic,” Kieser says. “We’re working in about 15 schools, K through 12. We wanted to try to get as much of a cross section as we could.”

Chris Pasles