After the abrupt halt to this year’s concert season, as well as many of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra’s educational outreach efforts, the BPO, through the members of its Education Committee, asked the music educators in the area what their greatest needs were during this unusual time of remote learning and social distancing. While the challenges and needs of the teachers and students are many, the most important needs identified centered around how to recruit the next generation of students into their school’s band or orchestra programs. In response, our BPO musicians led the way and have recorded a short demo of each instrument in the band and orchestra to help with instrumental recruiting programs. They all followed a similar format with an 8-measure rendition of “Ode to Joy”, a short personal commentary and a short characteristic excerpt.
The video links have since been distributed to all of the schools in Western New York and there is a possibility that, as more video content is created and as production value increases, these resources could be shared with other orchestras and schools on a national level, furthering the already impressive reach of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. Click here to see the amazing end results.
Our music educators have been expressing their appreciation through heartwarming messages:
“Congratulations on an excellent product. This is making quite the wave in our instrumental education community. Another example of the BPO’s tireless efforts to support music education for the good of our students and music programs in WNY.” – Grand Island teacher
“This is absolutely AMAZING! These are so well done. I plan to put the videos in action for recruitment in Alden by adding all videos into our padlet platform and a link will be sent out to all the 3rd grade parents June 1st.” – Alden teacher
“The recruitment videos are incredible! I already sent the link for the playlist out to my colleagues and everyone is breathing a sigh of relief that we don’t have to slave over creating our own since we will most likely be online in the fall. I’m really amazed and grateful for all of the outreach the BPO is doing during this time.” – Kenmore-Tonawanda