Brott Festival Orchestra enchants local students with Dan Brown’s Wild Symphony

Hundreds of school kids took in performances by the Brott Festival Orchestra Wednesday at the First Ontario Concert Hall in Hamilton.

The orchestra played songs from Wild Symphony by the author Dan Brown, who also penned the Da Vinci Code.

“These are annual education concerts that we do every season,” said Martin MacDonald with the Brott Music Festival. “I think this is 27 years now that we’ve been doing education concerts for ages, from kindergarten all the way up to grade six. You see that the kids, they started out coming to these kids concerts, and they’ve gone all the way up, and some of them have done it as a career, so it’s definitely been an inspiration to a lot.”

“I started on the drum set, I played drums in middle school and then in high school I started playing xylophones and the timpani, and just wanted to keep going,” said the percussionist Amiel Ang.

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“It’s really special, when I kind of see their faces,” said Ang. “Like, ‘oh, what’s making that sound?,’ and they see whose arms are moving and it’s really cool. They’re like, ‘oh this thing is so huge — what is that?’”

“Things like this, like if an orchestra would play Star Wars or some cool movie music when I was a little kid — I think is a lot of the reason that I am a trumpet player now,” said Shaw Nicholson, who plays second trumpet. “When I’m doing things like this, I try to exhibit the same energy that I got when I was a kid so that hopefully they’ll maybe be inspired.”

“We are doing this wonderful work by Dan Brown, the author,” said MacDonald. “He wrote the children’s book called Wild Symphony, and he also wrote all the music that they’re hearing as well — he’s also a composer. Orchestral music is so integrated into our culture, sometimes we don’t even realize it’s there.”

A few of the students told CHCH News what parts of the concert they enjoyed, how the music makes them feel and their experience seeing an ensemble of musicians play together.

“Students here today viewing the orchestra will get inspired, and hopefully see what’s possible outside of the classroom as well,” said Matthew Dach, the Arts Integration teacher.

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