Get LI kids jazzed about classical

Barbara Kerbel, of Great Neck, is the founder of a corporate brand identity and strategic marketing firm.

Until five years ago, when he won top prize in a Mahler conducting competition in Germany, Gustavo Dudamel was unknown on the world stage. Today he is classical music's rock star.

Long curls flying, the 29-year-old conducts not only with his baton but with his eyes, his mouth, his stance, with every body part, it seems. Sometimes, it appears that the podium is not large enough to contain him.

I know this because I watched him conduct music by John Adams, Leonard Bernstein and Ludwig van Beethoven this past Sunday in the Port Washington Clearview movie theater. It wasn't the first time classical fare has shared space with the likes of "Tron" and "True Grit" in our local cinemas. The Metropolitan Opera has been offering popular simulcasts for several years. The Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra jumped on the simulcast bandwagon this year.

Dudamel is conducting his heart out in this, his second season as musical director of the L.A. Philharmonic. A child of the middle class, he, like thousands of kids - many from profoundly impoverished neighborhoods in Venezuela - came up through that country's el sistema. Founded by Maestro José Antonio Abreu, el sistema is a nationwide music program based on the belief that where there is culture and music there will not be guns. That where material poverty is dauntingly severe, there need not be cultural poverty. That giving all children the chance to be part of a real orchestra provides for many the first feeling of community and accomplishment.

I'm not sufficiently musically sophisticated to determine if Dudamel's interpretations on Sunday were A+, whether he got the best out of the bassoons, the sweetest or most strident sounds from the strings as needed. I don't know if Bernstein would have applauded the young maestro's version of his first symphony, whether an errant flute tooted when it shouldn't have, if Beethoven would, indeed, have rolled over.

But I can see. And I can count. And I was saddened to the core that the theater, save for two dozen or so others souls who, like me, got two bucks off the $20 ticket for having lived to a certain age, was empty.

Music teachers, where were you? High school orchestra leaders, where were you? Where were your students? Parents of kids who compete in New York State Music Association competitions or study an instrument - or not - where were you?

I know, I know. Listening to an orchestra in a movie theater doesn't hold much sway when important football games are on. And surely it lacks the glamour of the concert hall, the titillation of eyeballing interesting-looking concertgoers, the electricity that ripples through the air at a live concert.

But it offers so much: a chance for music students to watch real pros play, an opportunity to open the minds of middle schoolers to the world beyond Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, a chance to see the conductor's front rather than his back.

In the case of the Dudamel simulcast, it also offered an opportunity for kids to see that conductors are cool - Angelenos call him the Dude - which can go a long way in turning kids on to something that might ordinarily elicit a disgusted "Eeeew."

We are lucky in our area to have reasonably priced live concerts for kids of all ages. The Long Island Philharmonic presents free summer concerts in parks across the Island, as well as annual youth concerts and in-school programs. In New York City, there's the Little Orchestra Society, which my mom took me to when I was a child, and the New York Philharmonic's program for young listeners. Even Broadway makes an effort, with special student prices for school trips and, though infrequent, "kids free" offers when you buy a full-priced ticket.

I get the feeling, though, that as a society we are not milking the opportunities available to both support and enjoy the arts. Though its education efforts will continue, the cancellation for financial reasons of all but one concert in the Long Island Philharmonic's regular 2010-2011 season is just one unhappy example.

In Abreu's words, "Whoever creates beauty by playing an instrument and generating musical harmony begins to understand from within what essential harmony is . . . human harmony." Think we could use any of that?