Elementary school students explore ragtime music at Piano Celebration Week

Looking up at a grand piano on the concert hall stage, the third grade students who filed into Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi's Performing Arts Center on Tuesday weren't sure if they were allowed to wriggle.

To the relief of the young audience, they were asked to stomp, clap, dance and snap along with lively ragtime music.

The seventh annual Piano Celebration Week introduced a new educational element this year. In addition to concerts and master classes, the festival invited thousands of elementary school students to attend Cliburn in the Classroom interactive concerts.

Over the course of the week, the festival is set to host nine Cliburn in the Classroom concerts from Fort Worth non-profit organization the Cliburn. Kolda Elementary School and Allen Elementary School attended the first session Tuesday morning.

Kolda Elementary School student Lana Walker was one of several students invited on stage to demonstrate the turkey trot, a dance popularized in the early 1900s to accompany fast ragtime music.

"It was really fun," she said.

Pianist Dzmitry Ulasiuk performed pieces such as "The Entertainer" and "Stop-Time Rag" by Scott Joplin, as well as pieces like the appropriately-named "Dizzy Fingers" by Zez Confrey and "Finger Buster" by Willy Smith.

Host Sara Doan explained the pieces and led students in interactive activities, explaining terms like duple meter and syncopation. Ragtime is style of music created in the 1800s by Black communities in the Midwest.

"I noticed some of you were dancing and shaking your shoulders when you're listening to the music, which is perfectly normal," Doan said to the students. "Ragtime music is dance music."

Students were excited for the field trip, Kolda Elementary School teacher Denise Walker said. During the performance, they learned about the background of music and history and culture, she said.

"It was awesome," she said.

In total, 3,000 students Kolda, Allen, Windsor Park, Barnes, Blanche Moore, Shaw, Zavala, Cullen Place and Yeager elementary schools in Corpus Christi ISD, St. James Episcopal School, Annapolis Christian Academy, Flour Bluff Elementary School, Calallen East Elementary School, Calallen Magee Intermediate School and Calallen West Intermediate School participated, as well as several homeschool families.

The goals of Piano Celebration Week are to provide opportunities to pianists of all ages and skills, to provide all events free of charge for the public and to make Corpus Christi a center of music education, festival organizer Dino Mulić said.

"What we were missing was educational programs for schools, especially grades K-4," Mulić said.

Mulić said a ragtime focus was chosen for the Cliburn in the Classroom concerts to highlight an American music style, as well as Texan ragtime pianist and composer Scott Joplin.

"This is the seventh annual Piano Celebration Week and we're finally where we have enough funds and knowledge and energy to partner with the Cliburn foundation to bring Cliburn in the Classroom," Mulić said, highlighting the contributions of Mitra and Bilal Khan and the Dobson family to help cover the cost of transporting students to campus for the program.

Mulić said he hopes the young audience will be inspired to pursue music.

"Music opened so many doors for me," Mulić said.

Mulić is from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. When he was 11, war broke out in his country.

"I could not go to school for four years and we had to leave our home for good because of the war," Mulić said. "All we could bring with ourselves was the music."

Music is the "language of the soul", Mulić said.

"I'm hoping to inspire not only our children, but also their families, to invest in their music education and sign them up for any instrument," Mulić said.

Music teaches dedication, passion, hard work and discipline, he said.

"Children are very creative," he said. "At this age, all we need to do is expose them."

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This article originally appeared on Corpus Christi Caller Times: Piano Celebration Week invites elementary schools to participate