GSO in Greenwich Schools

The Greenwich Symphony Orchestra has received a third anonymous gift of $10,000 to continue its program of GSO musicians performing in Greenwich schools, in response to requests from public elementary and middle school music teachers. Four schools were chosen to host a variety of programs scheduled for the 2009-2010 season.

A string quartet, comprising GSO principal chair musicians Krystof Witek, Susan Hytken, David Creswell, and Carlo Pelletieri will present a series of four 40-minute programs at Western Middle School in January. The group will perform excerpts from a variety of works from Vivaldi to Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Turina and Gershwin. Students will be led to listen and respond to variations in texture, pitch, melodic treatment and style.

''Storytime Quartet,'' a string quartet including GSO musicians Lisa Wolfe, Carla Fabiani, Whitney LaGrange and Daniel Miller, with narrator Eddie Pleasant, will present a program of three classic fairy tales enhanced by excerpts from classical music of Haydn, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich, to second and third grade classes at Julian Curtiss School in April.

GSO oboist Dorothy Darlington will present a program for Oboe, English Horn and Oboe D'Amore at Cos Cob Elementary School in October. Her program will include works by Bach, Mozart, Bizet, Telemann, Debussy, Britten, Prokofiev and Rimsky-Korsakoff.

In September, GSO Concertmaster Krystof Witek and his wife, flutist Tanya Dusevic Witek, played a great variety of music from Bach to Prokofiev for fourth and fifth grade students at International School at Dundee.