We inherited a “Baby Einstein” book: when you press buttons on the book, ugly midi-file (ice cream truck-style) excerpts of well-known classical pieces play.
It is handy to have these 16-bar themes accessible in one handy little book. But my child is only 9 months old. And it seems like such a waste to offer this as his first exposure to the symphonic world.
Kids are worth a few trips to the CD shelf (or iTunes library, or actual library). It is worth taking time to find and attend live concerts with kids.
Children’s music concerts and classes are great.
But so are all-age (“adult”) music concerts, especially outdoor music events and matinees, where you can bring snacks and/or sit near the door and duck out for little breaks.
Here’s to a summer of great music for kids of all ages!
PLUS: there are little icons of different instruments. when you touch one, a crappy little tune plays, UNRELATED to the picture of the instrument. Bongos? how about some Mozart? Not to mention that the typeface is offensively ugly, and the drawings all look like bad clip art. What are people trying to do to these kids? you can put actual recordings of actual music into greeting cards these days, I imagine there could be a better aesthetic at work with this stuff. grrr.
One of my fondest memories growing up was the ubiquitous presence of the classical music show, “Morning Pro Musica” on NPR, with Robert J. Lurtsema. And nowadays, I find myself flipping more and more often to the newest station in the Mass public radio fold, all-classical WCRB. I'm only sorry I miss the the weekday Bach luch concerts at my local public library!