Current print subscribers can create a free account by clicking here
Otherwise, follow the link below to join.
To Our Valued Readers –
Visitors to our website will be limited to five stories per month unless they opt to subscribe. The five stories do not include our exclusive content written by our journalists.
For $6.99, less than 20 cents a day, digital subscribers will receive unlimited access to YourValley.net, including exclusive content from our newsroom and access to our Daily Independent e-edition.
Our commitment to balanced, fair reporting and local coverage provides insight and perspective not found anywhere else.
Your financial commitment will help to preserve the kind of honest journalism produced by our reporters and editors. We trust you agree that independent journalism is an essential component of our democracy. Please click here to subscribe.
It’s not just great music about to be presented to hundreds of young musicians in Mesa and Gilbert public schools. There’s money involved, too.
On Friday, March 1, fifth- and sixth-grade band and orchestra students from eight Gilbert Public elementary schools will travel to Gilbert High School to hear the East Valley Pops Orchestra, a 75-musician group that’s been entertaining area audiences for more than four decades.
Then three days later — Monday, March 4 — EVPO will play for more than 400 sixth-grade music students from 10 Mesa public schools gathered at Kino Junior High.
And in each case the orchestra will be awarding the schools’ music education programs thousands of dollars raised through EVPO’s philanthropic efforts.
Julie Mahoney, a retired Mesa public school teacher in her 30th year as EVPO’s director, says the special concerts are designed to entertain, engage and inspire students.
“For this level of student, ‘orchestra’ generally means a small group of string players,” Mahoney said. “We show them that a symphony orchestra is comprised of both strings and what they think of as ‘band’ instruments. And many of them possibly have never seen or heard an oboe, for instance, or a bassoon. They’ll get that experience at these concerts.”
Christa Cook, a teacher at Mesa’s Jefferson Elementary School, reflected on last year’s program. “For some of our students, this was their first experience seeing a symphony orchestra perform live, and they talked about it for quite some time after the concert.”
Then there’s the surprise element. Darth Vader, for example, has been known to appear when the orchestra strikes up the theme from “Star Wars.” And representatives from individual schools are sometimes called upon to answer a musical quiz question to “win” grant money for their schools.
That money — totaling more than $20,000 — comes from contributions made by EVPO audience members, its musicians and other music lovers. Schools invited to the March concerts are all Title 1 schools with lower-income student populations.
“Our orchestra members obviously enjoy making music,” said Mahoney. “But they’ll tell you these school concerts are really special. We enjoy the kids’ response to what they hear, and we hope and believe they’re being inspired to continue to make their own music into the upper grades and beyond.”
Gilbert Elementary public schools attending the March 1 concert: Boulder Creek, Burk, Harris, Islands, Playa del Ray, Gilbert, Oak Tree and Pioneer.
Mesa elementary public schools attending the March 4 concert: Adams, Guerrero, Lehi, Lindbergh, Kerr, Porter, Redbird, Roosevelt, Whitman and Whittier.
