Lincoln Youth Concert an evening to remember

The Lincoln Community Hall was filled wall-to-wall last Thursday night for the Lincoln Youth Concert, a collaboration between the Lincoln School choir and band programs and the Blackfoot Pathways: Sculpture in the Wild concert series.

An estimated 180 parents and community members packed the hall as 90 Lincoln students ranging from kindergarten to high school seniors joined BPSW Composer-in-residence Adele O'Dwyer, Violist Aoise O'Dwyer, violinist Marvin Suson, and pianist Cullen Bryant for performances of a series of songs prepared during the last year as part of the Sculpture in the Wild Montana-Ireland Song Exchange.

The performance included two folks songs sung during party dances by kindergarten elementary students that Lincoln schools music teacher Melissa Gilbert taught the kids as a way to make learning music easier.

"I introduced each song originally as they were done," she said. "They're folk songs and they were passed down generation to generation, and not just to kids. They did it with adults. That was their way of being able to meet people. That was how they taught so many things."

The evenings performance, which was met with a standing ovation, included both American music and Irish folk songs.

"The idea was to share the arts of each country," O'Dwyer said. "They shared their American songs and American dances and their American poems and things like that."

O'Dwyer in turn taught them about Irelands culture and their songs and dances. Most of the exchange was done over the internet.

"All those Irish songs we taught them all over Skype, During the last four or five months of the school year," O'Dwyer said.

In addition to songs, Gilbert worked with Aoise O'Dwyer to write musical harmonies that member of the band who weren't singing could play during the final performance of the evening.

"When we first started talking about how to end the concert we were looking for a way to include all music students," she said. "We decided to add them because the rest of my band was in choir."

It also gave Makenzie Story, who plays the violin, and her brother Gavin Jorgensen, an aspiring cellist, the chance to play alongside. and learn from, professional musicians.

"They did great," O'Dwyer said, adding that Gavin, who hasn't had a formal cello lesson in the last two years, was really soaking up the experience.

Gilbert wasn't sure how the interactions would translate from Skype to the classroom, but said she couldn't have asked for a better group of people.

"They could switch age groups from kindergartners to high schoolers within five minutes, and they were able to relate with all the kids," she said.

For her part, O'Dwyer said she doesn't think the evening could have gone much better.

"The kids were having fun, and it was disciplined, and it was musically disciplined," she said after the concert. "Didn't they sound beautiful tonight? They were deadly. I thought they sounded fantastic, and evidently more than half that choir is brand new."

She credited Gilberts skill in preparing the kids for the concert

"It shows how much preparation work she's done. If they didn't have musical preparation they could never have done that. It shows how doing that year by year, learning a little bit of musical literacy and skills every year makes a big difference."

Gilbert said she thinks it's an experience the kids will always remember.

"I told my students this may be something you'll look back and say "Wasn't that amazing? That we had musicians who came here from all over the country and the world to play with us."