The sweet sounds of classical music filled the air Friday at The Rady Shell.
Pacific Beach Elementary School third grader Sydney Shebatka was part of the magic.
“It’s amazing,” Shebatka said, while watching the San Diego Symphony warm up.
Her classmate Allison Lemus was also in awe.
“We're gonna sing The Blue Danube, and I'm really excited for it,” Lemus said, just ahead of the performance.
They were two of roughly 5,000 elementary school students from across San Diego County who performed alongside professional musicians from the San Diego Symphony.
“We're playing a really famous piece by a Mexican composer named Moncayo, his Huapango — and so they're going to do some body percussion along with that piece,” said the organization’s Laura Reynolds. “Then the blue Danube by Johann Strauss, they'll get to sing along with the orchestra.”
The performance is the grand finale of a lot of hard work, said Shebatka and Lemus’ teacher Michelle Warner.
“Something that was foreign to them, now they have — not just an understanding — but the language to go with it, they have an ear for the music,” Warner said. “And the curriculum is wonderful because it's very teacher friendly.”
For the past two months they’ve been learning all about music from a San Diego Symphony interactive elementary school music program called Sound and Silence.
“I've learned about pitch, melody, tempo, articulation and dynamics,” Shebatka said.
Lemus said she remembers similar topics, and showed off a bit of her new knowledge.
“For example, pitch is how high or how low a note is,” she said.
Friday's performance had the most students ever featured live at the San Diego Symphony.
Reynolds described it as a massive sing-along with the orchestra.
“The students literally become part of the ensemble, and are making music together. It's their San Diego Symphony debut,” she said excitedly.
While neither Shebatka or Lemus know how to play instruments just yet, they have lessons to take home and are inspired to dive deeper into the world of music.
They already have a few instruments in mind.
“Probably like, either the violin or the trombone like my brother does,” Shebatka said.
Lemus is either thinking about the violin or the flute. Most importantly, she’s thinking about relishing this special moment.
“I’m also really proud of myself and all my classmates for doing this, because it's going to be really cool and it's also the first time I've been here, so it's even more exciting,” the third grader said.
The Symphony plans to do this again next year and said that any school in San Diego County can have their third through fifth graders take part.
“I'm so glad that they get to have this experience,” said Warner, the teacher. “They'll always have a good memory of being able to learn the music and then actually see it in person.”
