Students get close encounter with the Spokane Symphony

Spokane Symphony guest conductor Jeremy Briggs Roberts encourages Nine Mile Falls student Liz Kurtz as she leads the symphony Thursday. 

Fourth-grader Liz Kurtz was nervous about her guest conductor appearance Thursday with the Spokane Symphony.

After all, the Nine Mile Falls Elementary School student found out about her star turn just minutes before she was to take the podium in front of 1,300 other fourth-graders.

But after directing the “Washington Post March,” the girl who fancies country music said she’d do it again in a second.

Liz’s encounter with the baton – she was selected in a drawing – was a segment of the Spokane Symphony’s 40-year tradition of helping inspire musical ambitions among Eastern Washington grade-school students, who get the chance to play instruments in school programs starting in fifth grade.

The annual 4th Grade Musical Encounter – in which the full orchestra introduces instruments and their sounds in these concerts for kids – drew more than 4,300 students from throughout the region to the Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox on Tuesday and Thursday.

Prior to the field trip, the fourth-graders spent time in class learning about the music they would hear, said Janet Napoles, manager of education programs with the symphony.

Those lessons were reinforced during a performance by guest conductor Jeremy Briggs Roberts, music director and conductor of the Icicle Creek Youth Symphony in Leavenworth.

He stood next to Liz and whispered in her ear as she conducted. “I was trying to tell her to bring the brass up or down … and to interact with the musicians.”