Some recent science-oriented television programs, as well as journals and other periodicals, have presented material that strongly supports the assertion that childhood musical training, especially instrumental, can influence a child’s brain development.
One recent assertion of this claim was on the six-part PBS series “The Brain.”
For example, the series explored how the brain of the late great scientist Albert Einstein differed from a “normal” human brain. The viewer is shown an area at the back of the lower right side of Einstein’s brain. Rather than a “knob” of normal size, this area was markedly enlarged. The program’s narrator, David Eagleman, points out that the same formation exists in the brains of other right-handed people who practiced intensely on the violin as children. These enlargements are not seen in the brains of people who lacked musical training.
Eagleman added that brains of pianists who trained in their early years also have enlargements in the same area of the brain but also on the corresponding part of the other side of the brain, the portion of the brain that controls the right hand. (String players get more development for the left hand, which makes the notes by depressing the strings, compared to the right hand, which does the bowing. For pianists, the increase in brain development is more evenly distributed.)
Why put all this science stuff in a classical music column? My hope is that it might encourage parents of young children to check out some of the impressive Bay Area youth orchestras scheduled to perform concerts at various venues in the coming weeks.
One of the first of these will be a concert by the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra scheduled for Sunday at Davies Symphony Hall. Maestro Donato Cabrera will be at the podium conducting a program that will feature the young folks using their increasingly enhanced brains and bodies to perform Maurice Ravel’s “Alborada del gracioso,” Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” and Antonin Dvorak’s gorgeous Cello Concerto in B minor, with 17-year-old cellist Elena Ariza as soloist.
During a recent interview with Ariza at Davies Hall, she revealed that her mother, a pianist and piano teacher, started her on the cello at age 3. Her older brother preceded her in piano study and later added violin. With a chuckle, she said, “I think our mother, who loved piano trio music, had future plans for us to join her in our own family piano trio. Our father, a software engineer in Cupertino, was designated to become the future trio’s cameraman.”
Ariza attends the Menlo School in Atherton and studies cello with Eric Sung at San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Her plans include studying music at the Juilliard School and software engineering at Columbia University in New York City.
She has been a member of the SFSYO since 2011 and was designated its principal cellist in 2014. She participated in SFSYO’s European tours in 2012 and 2015. Another thrill was her recent performance of Debussy’s Cello Sonata with Christopher O’Riley as her piano accompanist on National Public Radio’s “From the Top” broadcast.
When I mentioned to Ariza the recent PBS telecast on music study and its effect on human brain development, she added some of her own observations. “Among many other things, music study has taught me self-discipline and how to manage time.”
SFSYO’s upcoming performance will be at 2 p.m. Sunday at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. Tickets range from $15 to $54. Call 415-864-6000 or go to www.sfsymphony.org.
At least 90 more youthful brains are growing and developing across the bay in Oakland. The Oakland Symphony is nurturing an orchestra of 90 young musicians gleaned from 46 schools and 30 cities in the greater Bay Area. The group, Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra, will present three concerts during its 2015-2016 season. All will be under the leadership of Omid Zoufonoun, who is a conductor, guitarist, educator and award-winning composer with Persian musical heritage, learned from his father.
The first performance is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Nov. 15 in the concert hall located in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, 50 Oak St., San Francisco. Admission is free.
The concert will feature Maestro Zoufonoun conducting a program that will include the stirring Overture to Verdi’s opera “Nabucco”; the middle movement, “Nigun” (an improvisation), to Ernest Bloch’s “Baal Shem,” which will feature violinist Jaclyn Thach, a high school junior from Dougherty Valley High School in San Ramon, as soloist; Shostakovich’s “Chamber Symphony”; and selections from Prokofiev’s glorious “Romeo and Juliet” ballet.
And that’s not all. Since the Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra is deeply committed to international cultural exchange, this coming spring it will undertake a tour to Cuba to perform.
Contact Cheryl North at cherylnorth@hotmail.com.
