All that jazz

Charlie Head plays the clarinet while playing with the Marshall Symphony Ark-La-Tex Dixieland Band Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012, during the annual Dixieland on the Square in downtown Marshall. (Kevin Green/News-Journal Photo)

Members of the Marshall Symphony Orchestra gave Marshallites a taste of some good old ragtime music at their “Dixieland on the Square” concert at Telegraph Park in downtown Wednesday.

The annual free event has been kicking off the Marshall Symphony Orchestra’s performance season for the past 25 years of the orchestra’s 61 years of existence.

“We’ve done it for years and years,” said Beckie Bates, President of the Marshall Symphony League. ” They play Dixieland music for us and we just invite the whole community to come out.”

Concert-goers on their lunch break were encouraged to bring their own sack lunch or buy one from the Symphony League’s volunteers for $5.

“It’s all done by volunteers,” said Bates, who is in her 14th year as a member of the league. “We try to make it easy for everybody to come on down and enjoy their lunch.”

Rene Blohm, teacher at J.H. Moore Elementary School and Symphony League member, brought her class of second-graders out to take in the tunes.

“We brought them out to enjoy the music and see what classical music is all about,” she said. “I thought it would be a nice experience for our children because our children don’t often get to experience things like this.”

The concert wasn’t just a free pass to get out of class though. The students had to complete an assignment comparing the music they normally listen to with the music they heard on the trip when they got back to class.

“They will draw pictures of what they saw up here and then they will write about what they saw,” said Blohm. “They will explain the difference, in their words, between classical music and the rap they’re used to listening to.”

Blohm said she told her students it would be music like when they went to the dentist or doctor’s office.

“I told them it would be a little spunky and they could get up and go dance if they want to,” she said. “But none of them have been brave enough so far.”

That changed by the time the concert ended.

Blohm’s class isn’t the first to get a cultural event pass out of school. She said J.H. Moore had sent older grade levels before, but that this was the first chance the second grade had got to go.

Those who missed their own chance to see Wednesday’s performance will still have an opportunity to get their orchestral fix for the week.

Michael Shotton, a British vocalist for the Ontario, Canada-based rock cover group Jeans ‘N Classics, is teaming with guitarist Martyn Popey of the Marshall Symphony Orchestra to do a “Meet the Marshall Symphony Orchestra: Unplugged” concert at Central Perks in the Weisman Center at 6 p.m. tonight.

Tiffany Ammerman is the President of the Marshall Symphony Society and said that “Meet the Marshall Symphony Orchestra” is a way to showcase what members of the orchestra do outside of the orchestra.

“They might have a jazz duo. They might have a string quartet,” she said. “It’s always interesting and always something different.”

According to the groups official bio on its website, Jeans ‘N Classics concept combines “rock musicians and headlining stars with world-class symphony orchestras.”

The group will perform two dress rehearsals in the Weisman Center, one at 7 p.m. Friday night and one at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, ahead of their big concert with the Marshall Symphony Orchestra in the Weisman Center at 7 p.m. on Saturday.

“It’s a concert, but it’s more of an event,” said Ammerman of the event that will be simulcast on screens around downtown. “Some of the Canadians in Jeans ‘N Classics have been saying it’s going to be like being on a street in New Orleans. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

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