Young People’s Concerts

The San Antonio Symphony’s school-day Young People’s Concerts (YPCs) have introduced over 1,000,000 area youth to live orchestral music since 1943. Thanks to our generous funders, this flagship of the Symphony’s education programs has grown to more fully support the efforts of educators in our community’s schools, with nearly 40,000 students attending annually. Programs align to Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) teaching objectives for Fine Arts and a rotating core subject area, including Science, Social Studies, and English Language Arts and Reading. Designed for students grades 3-5, YPCs engage children with interactive components as well as carefully planned and highly-educational programs of music and lecture. Free educational materials provided to teachers in advance of each program include a comprehensive Teacher’s Guide with built-in classroom activities and access to an online playlist of the concert music selections.

While the Symphony is all about helping people become acquainted with masterpieces of symphonic repertoire, the real reason for offering Young People’s Concerts has to do with the children themselves. A extensive and growing body of research has shown that arts opportunities and music learning in particular can have a tremendous impact on a child’s growth and development, including significant benefits in other academic subject areas. Therefore, one major goal of the YPC program is to inspire students in attendance to pick up an instrument of their own – especially those making their way into middle school, where they’ll hopefully have the opportunity to participate in band, orchestra or mariachi. While we know that not every student is going to become a professional Symphony musician, the documented benefits of learning to play a musical instrument are too profound for us – and the community – to ignore.