Columnist Susan Snyder: Series gives kids Fudd for thought

Friday, Jan. 7, 2005 | 3:41 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursday and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

WEEKEND EDITION

January 8 - 9, 2005

The guy sitting next to me at Artemus Ham Hall bounced on his folding auditorium seat.

It was easy because his feet were nowhere near touching the floor. He giggled with his buddies and stared at the ceiling.

"What're those squares up there?" he asked.

"I dunno," one of them replied. "You think they'll fall on us?"

More giggles.

"If I get bored, I'm going to fall asleep," the first boy said.

A teacher leaned over the seats behind us.

"I don't think you'll fall asleep," she said.

The boy's expression showed he wasn't so sure. Orchestra people seemed kind of stuffy.

Las Vegas Philharmonic Director Richard McGee hoped to prove otherwise and lure some of the 1,700 children at Wednesday's concert into playing a musical instrument.

About 14,000 Clark County fourth and fifth graders attended the philharmonic's free Youth Concert Series at UNLV last week. McGee has been leading them since 1999.

"It's a way for them to get involved in something they can do the rest of their lives. It helps us too. We're developing our audiences for the future," he said. "This is the most fun thing I do for the entire year."

Concertgoers filed into Ham Hall by the bus load -- a wiggly sea of patent leather shoes and carefully tucked shirttails.

Teachers had primed them on symphony etiquette: No feet on the seat; no talking during the concert; no shifting around while the orchestra is playing, and no hooting.

"I saw that. Don't do it again," said Debra Ketchum, a Lake Elementary School music teacher keeping watch from the aisle.

She was firm, but not harsh. It was a big day for her kids. Most were pretty excited.

"This is something that most won't do ever again," Ketchum said. "If our kids had to pay even $2, they couldn't come."

Many of the children had never seen the inside of an auditorium or heard an orchestra play -- or not realized they have heard one.

"This is music they have heard on TV or in movies. But they don't realize that human beings play that music and create that sound. And they don't know that it's not just one person, but it takes a whole group of people working together," said Candy Schneider, assistant director of the school district's community partnership program.

McGee opened the concert with the 20th Century Fox fanfare that opens movies. The children erupted in uproarious applause when the orchestra played music from "The Lord of the Rings."

"Oooh, I know this part," a little girl whispered to her seatmate. She tapped her toes as they played "In Hall of the Mountain King" (think: Mickey Mouse, brooms, buckets of water) and hummed along with the overture from "The Barber of Seville" (Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, a barber's chair).

Backstage, before the show, McGee commented on the playing of "Seville."

"I can't do that piece without thinking of Bugs Bunny making a salad on Elmer Fudd's head," he admitted.

So much for stuffy.

"I thought it was all great," fifth grader Sierra Beggs said after the concert. "I want to play the violin."