Issue 18, Winter 2012
Music Preparatory program enrolls hundreds each semester
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| Children as young as newborn have been students in TCU's Early Childhood Music program. |
It’s late morning on the TCU campus and the classroom is crawling with activity. There’s color and movement, as students begin today’s lesson … bouncing and clapping to tuneful “golden oldies” like Little Miss Muffet, Little Jack Horner and The Cow Jumped Over the Moon.
What? This is college? Definitely.
The Music Preparatory program in the TCU School of Music has a long history of offering lessons and classes to children and adults in the Fort Worth community. It began with piano lessons in the early 1970s and has expanded to include year-round private instruction in violin, viola, cello, guitar, flute, voice and composition.
In addition to regular Music Prep faculty, teaching staff includes TCU School of Music professors, graduate students and undergraduate students.
Housed in the lower level of Ed Landreth Hall, Music Prep currently enrolls more than 700 youngsters and adults each semester. Nearly half of those are part of the Early Childhood Music program that originated about 30 years ago and offers Music Together® parent-and-child classes for infants, toddlers and little ones up to age seven.
The concept of these sessions is not to teach music to babies but to provide 30 minutes of joyful play interaction with a parent or grandparent that just happens to be set to a musical background. “Children want to do what their parents are doing,” explains TCU’s Early Childhood Music coordinator Jennifer DeSantis, nodding at the cozy circle of families moving to the teacher’s singing and guitar accompaniment. “They’re all having fun with music. By absorbing the tones and rhythms, regular exposure like this gives youngsters a huge head start when it comes to the ability to sing in tune and keep a steady beat,” says DeSantis. Read more
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