Southside, McMurray & Upper St. Clair, PA - Babies through kindergarteners and the adults who love them are invited to participate in a free demonstration of international early childhood music program Music Together in Pittsburgh. The class is led by Upper St. Clair High School alumna and Mt. Lebanon resident Daisy Klaber, Director of Household Harmony, where families come together.

Created in 1987, the research-based Music Together family class brings together twelve children and their parents or caregivers (grandparents, aunts, uncles, nannies) to meet weekly for 45 minutes and experience new songs, chants, movement activities and instrumental jam sessions. Everybody participates in this non-performance-oriented program, led by a teacher with a master's degree in Montessori education and both formal and informal music training and experience. In cooperation with WYEP 91.3 FM, the Township Recreation Program in Upper St. Clair, and Changing Seasons Learning Center near Donaldson's Crossroads, Klaber helps adults understand how to join in and why it's important to relax and enjoy activities with their children--regardless of their own musical abilities.

Within the mixed-age group class, children have many developmentally appropriate opportunities to be creative--imitating rhythm patterns, improvising new words to songs, and making up movements to express sounds. Some children actively observe what's happening as they absorb the musically rich environment. Others sing, play and dance freely because they know the songs and chants from the illustrated songbook and CDs they take home to share as a family. All experience a comfortable, encouraging atmosphere and community that respect individual personalities and interests. Twelve to fourteen activities are included in each class meeting, ranging from free, interpretive movement pieces to songs sung and harmonized in unusual musical recipes called tonalities and meters. There are nine unique, culturally diverse song collections in the cyclical Music Together curriculum so a family can take part for three years straight before encountering any song from a past session, and by then, the preschooler who first listened to that song as an infant now experiences it in a new way.

The Music Together program was developed, and is continuously refined, at the Center for Music and Young Children in Princeton, New Jersey, by coauthors Kenneth K. Guilmartin and Lili M. Levinowitz. Guilmartin is active internationally in research and teacher training. He composes and arranges many of the pieces in the Music Together song collections. "We believe that every child is musical, and that each child needs a stimulating, supportive music environment in order to enjoy the wonderful human capacity for music-making," says Guilmartin. Dr. Levinowitz, a professor of Music Education at Rowan College of New Jersey, is recognized as an authority on early childhood music. "Many adults are simply not aware of how well infants and toddlers can learn and enjoy music," says Levinowitz. "Our parent surveys indicate that families play [and sing along with] the Music Together recordings on an average of six times per week and that almost all infants and toddlers express clear preferences for the Music Together recordings and for certain songs on each recording. Movement and music are excellent activities for the very young."

Music Together is an approach to early childhood that takes advantage of every child's window of opportunity for the development of basic music competence (singing in tune and keeping a beat) by providing an active music-making experience rather than explicitly presenting musical concepts and information to be received passively. Families are encouraged to come together, so younger children and their older siblings can learn memory-making music and movement activities to enjoy at home with one another as part of their daily life. Adults also enjoy the classes because their own skills and appreciation increase while they relax, get involved and have fun. Many find that they respond to being part of the live, cooperative experience, and to the music they help create, just as joyfully as their children do.