Tuba City Primary partners with Carnegie Hall Weill Music program

TUBA CITY, Ariz. -- Tuba City District Unified School District has incorporated the Carnegie Hall Weill Music program into their curriculum to give primary and middle school students a chance to learn about, participate in and experience musical as part of their weekly classroom schedule.

Weill Music Institute (WMI), through the Carnegie Hall program, offers more than 170,000 people each year the opportunity to experience music either on-line or in actual classroom settings. The program allows students to explore the idea of becoming a music performer or an active audience member by providing outreach programs in remote areas like Tuba City.

With musical selection from jazz to classical and world music, the Carnegie program allows students to hear, play and appreciate music from all areas of the world.

Stephen Almquist, a new Tuba City District teacher, is the mentor-instructor for the Carnegie program for third through fifth grade students in the Tuba City program. He was a music teacher for Flagstaff Unified School District before coming to Tuba City two years ago.

Mary Nebel, the education department chair for Flagstaff Symphony Orchestra (FSO) in Flagstaff, originally contacted Almquist. Nebel hoped to have an on-reservation pilot Weill school program.

With the support of Tuba City Primary Principal Dr. Justin Roberson and Superintendent Dr. Harold G. Begay, Almquist moved forward and had students interested in playing and learning about music sign up for the Carnegie program.

So far Almquist has 171 students participating in the program.

Students that are picking up the music curriculum and are showing the most discipline will perform publicly in Tuba City and Flagstaff in February 2016.

The Carnegie Weill program also provided 30 recorders for free for Tuba City Primary students to practice and learn on.

The idea is to get the Tuba City students to partner with the Flagstaff Symphony and other students from Coconino County public schools at Ardrey Auditorium at Northern Arizona University next February and experience what it's like to be in an actual public concert and play with a professional orchestra.

The Tuba City Primary School music curriculum includes lessons on proper musicianship, writing lyrics for one of the songs, learning music vocabulary, reading and playing rhythms, learning the family of orchestra instruments and a learning short history of Carnegie Hall.

The Tuba City Primary students practice once a week with their classroom instructor but some who are enthusiastic about the program come during lunch hour or after school to practice even more.

"These student's cognitive skills are challenged through this program as they seek to incorporate the simultaneous application of reading the note name, their duration value, and their tactile use of the recorder," Almquist said. "This program broadens their experience of a greater musical community and history of what they experience here at school. Its statistical fact, that music creation incorporates several brain intelligences simultaneously, therefore increasing the cognitive demand and growth. Music experience will help in their writing, analytical and their math skills as well as learning how to read and write music."