Academic & Performance Areas

Taggart Helps Orchestras Reach Out to Give the Gift of Music to Young Children

In recent times, audiences for American symphony orchestras have been shrinking and aging. As a result, more outreach is being done to build connections between the orchestras and their surrounding communities. Cynthia Taggart, associate professor of music and an expert on early childhood music education, has been at the leading edge of this outreach. She has been working with both the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, for which she serves on the educational advisory board, and the National Repertory Orchestra (NRO) for the past two years.

 “The Pittsburgh Symphony has one of the most innovative outreach programs for young children,” said Professor Taggart. “In fact, in March 2002 it held a conference entitled "Harmonic Development: Music's Impact to age Three," geared toward learning about the role of music in early childhood.”

In February 2002, Professor Taggart was brought in to help the Pittsburgh Symphony orchestra musicians enrich their interactions with children as young as 2 months old.

She also team-taught a class of children with an orchestra member. In February 2003, she returned to work with the orchestra along with education directors from the American Symphony Orchestra League. This time she taught a workshop modeling an appropriate early childhood music environment, while teaching a group of children ages 3 to 5. Orchestra members, in turn, use this training to go out into the community and create these specialized settings, where they work with groups of preschool children. They work with the same children for about six weeks in order to deliver meaningful and sustained instruction, and to establish relationships with them.

“The first years of children’s lives play an important role in their connection to and learning of music because the synapses of their brains are forming,” said Professor Taggart. “Therefore, when children are immersed in a rich music environment, their brains ‘hard-wire’ to enable them to enjoy and participate in music for the rest of their lives.”

Due to her successful work in Pittsburgh, Professor Taggart was requested to train musicians of the NRO as well. As a result, she conducted workshops on the components of appropriate music experiences for young children at the 2002 and 2003 Summer Festival Orchestra in Breckenridge, Colorado. She also worked in early childhood settings with the musicians, team-teaching classes of young children ranging in ages from birth through 5.

"The most exciting thing about working with these musicians," says Professor Taggart, "is that they represent the future of our orchestras.  If we help them learn how to reach out to their future communities and provide appropriate early childhood music experiences, the benefits will be far-reaching."