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It’s a long way from learning to play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” in the band room at Avery Trace Middle School to performing orchestral music for an adult audience in Wattenbarger Auditorium at Tennessee Tech University, but these young musicians are determined to get there.



Just two months ago, the 45 members of the new Community Youth String Orchestra, a group of 4th grade children learning to play the violin, began rehearsals for their public debut at TTU at 6 p.m., Tuesday, Dec. 9. The ensemble is the natural extension of last year’s pilot strings program in Putnam County Schools that has put violins in the hands of 3rd and 4th graders for the first time in a generation.



“It’s just the most natural thing in the world for an orchestra to help form a strings program in schools where there isn’t one,” said Gail Luna, executive director of the Bryan Symphony Orchestra Association, which helped coordinate the strings program. “The music teachers do a wonderful job one-on-one with the children in the classroom. What the children need after that is a place to apply what they’ve learned, and in many schools, that means joining the band or choir.



“What we haven’t had in local schools for many years is an orchestra, and that’s a need the BSO can help fill,” said Luna. “Learning to play in an orchestral setting is the next logical step: It’s going from learning music to making music as an ensemble, which is tremendously fulfilling.”



The music faculty of Putnam County Schools recently added 20 cellos to the violins already available to the children, and instruction on the larger instrument started in October by professional symphony musician Kirsten Cassel. BSOA board member Clarissa Miller is coordinator of the new strings program in Putnam County Schools, while BSO violist Seanad Chang leads strings instruction.



“I am so excited about the strings program,” said Kathleen Airhart, Putnam County director of schools. “Regardless of what else we do with grant money in the future, I want this to keep going - to take strings education beyond our 3rd and 4th graders. And it’s starting to happen. My ultimate goal is to move into developing a middle school strings program, and then on into high school. It’s going to take a few years, but it’s going to happen.”



The Community Youth String Orchestra is funded through a community engagement grant to the BSOA from Averitt Express.



The next performance of the Bryan Symphony Orchestra, which features Mozart’s Symphony no. 30, begins at 3 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 22, in Wattenbarger Auditorium, the concert hall of the Bryan Fine Arts Building on the TTU campus. Tickets are limited; contact the symphony box office at 931-372-6088 for availability.