MOUNT VERNON — The Knox County Symphony launches its 61st season on Sunday, Sept. 27, with its annual children’s concert, featuring music that swaggers, sneaks, flits, and soars.
The free concert begins at 3 p.m. in the Schnormeier Event Center at Ariel-Foundation Park. It includes special art activities for children as well as free cider and cookies.
Children can move around during the performance if they like. Because the event center is covered, the audience can enjoy the concert rain or shine.
Two popular, high-energy works from the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean” anchor the program: “The Curse of the Black Pearl,” and the overture to “The Thieving Magpie,” by the 19th-century composer Gioachino Rossini.
The program also includes music from the film “Encanto,” composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and an engaging, cleverly patterned piece called “Perpetuoso,” by Brian Holmes.
In addition, families can look forward to the concert’s tradition of conductor
Benjamin Locke picking a child from the audience to conduct part of a piece.
“This is the sort of event I was always looking for when my own children were small,”
said Rebecca Abbott, president of the symphony board. “The music is lively and interactive but not a bunch of hastily written pop songs for kids. It’s the kind of music we can all grow into the rest of our lives.”
Music selection swaggers and soars
The “Pirates of the Caribbean” medley has proven to be a favorite with Knox County Symphony audiences in recent years, with sections that are by turns mysterious, lyrical, majestic, and hard-driving.
The piece evokes the film with passages titled “Fog Bound,” “The Medallion Calls,” “To the Pirates’ Cave,” “The Black Pearl,” “One Last Shot,” and “He’s a Pirate.” The music is by Klaus Badelt, a prolific composer and arranger of film scores.
Rossini’s overture to “The Thieving Magpie” was composed in 1817, but its playfully dramatic tunes – which march, sneak, flit, and soar – have been plucked by directors for use in modern media from cartoons to films.
Passages from the piece, originally written by Rossini (1792-1868) for an opera semiseria (semi-serious opera), appear in the films “A Clockwork Orange” (1971) and “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984), as well as in the television show “Sherlock.”
The children’s art activities at the concert will center on a dazzlingly colorful work created in 2022 by South Korean artist Haegue Yang.
The piece, called “Swaying Flaring Blooming Formation – Mesmerizing Mesh #135,” is part of the collection of The Gund, the museum and gallery of Kenyon College. A reproduction of the work will appear in the concert program.
Sacha Franjola, the Gund’s postbaccalaureate fellow, will speak briefly about the piece. Kenyon students who work as associates with The Gund will provide art supplies to young members of the audience so that they can create their own artwork as they listen to the music.
The symphony’s next performance will be its fall concert on Oct. 31 in the R.R. Hodges Chapel Auditorium at Mount Vernon Nazarene University.
Visit the symphony’s website for more information about the symphony and its 2026-27 season.