Beverly Fourth Grade Takes Trip to the DSO

By: Lilly Richards

Today the Beverly Fourth Graders took a long but eventful and exciting trip to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for a field trip. Since we had a half day because of student-led conferences, the field trip took up the entire school day.                

I have been to the DSO before and my visits didn’t take that long to drive to. This trip was a different case. It took about one boring hour to get there on some roundabout way. 

When we finally arrived at the concert, the musicians were just beginning to start the show. The theme of the concert was “Why Is Music Popular?”  The conductor, Teddy Abrams talked to us about it and told us that this music was called an orchestra. The first piece of music we listened to was called “Entrance of the Queen of Sheba” by George Handel. The conductor told us that a long time ago people would go to theaters and listen to music with a story for amusement. This song was written for a theater. The next song was very funny. Called “Surprise”, it played a bunch of little quiet notes and then a really loud note! It shocked all of us! The conductor said that he was glad we noticed the surprise because some audiences that he had before failed to notice anything. After “Surprise” we heard a happy, loud Beethoven symphony. But not everything was so joyful. The next piece of music we heard was very sad and by Tchaikovsky. It made me feel sad just like Teddy Abrams said it would.  Next, we heard a song called “Saturday Night Waltz”. To me it sounded like happy, fast carnival music. Next to me, Jack was bobbing his head up and down rapidly to the music! After that, we heard a short section of Saint Louis Blues. I enjoyed it a lot because I have always been a fan of jazz. Lastly, to everyone’s delight, we heard the theme song of Star Wars.          

I was glad we went on this field trip to give everyone a chance to experience some good music.