By Bill Slocum
Contributing Editor
For three years, Old Greenwich’s Shelly Cryer has been on a mission bringing together parents and children while raising musical awareness, through a professional concert series held at venues throughout the town.
“These concerts are an experience to be shared with our children,” she said. “There’s a joy in enjoying the experience as they’re enjoying the experience.”
And that is what happens, she added, with programs encompassing everything from opera to folk music. Now in its third year, Curiosity Concerts will present ten concerts this season. About the only thing they have in common is the admission price: Nothing.
“We are committed to not having ticket price be an obstacle to enjoy the concerts,” Cryer said.
The next show, entitled “Echoing Voices: A Musical History of America,” is being held Jan. 10 at the Western Greenwich Civic Center and features Sonic Escape, a trio consisting of a flautist, a violinist, and a cellist. “Echoing Voices” harkens to the immigrant experience that formed American life by profiling the musical identities of the nations from whence they came.
Sonic Escape participated in a Curiosity Concert last season. “They use music to tell stories,” Cryer said. “They captivate their audiences and bring so much joy to their performances. They just absolutely represent everything I’m trying to achieve in the concert series.”
Cryer, who is Curiosity Concerts’ founder and producer, describes the shows as a different kind of children’s musical programming. “These are not kiddie concerts,” she said. “The kids don’t run up to the front of the room and sit on the floor. Parents sit with their children, and enjoy the music as much as their children do.”
The expense for putting on these concerts is grown-up enough. “Sometimes the direct value of a ticket, with no staff time included, is $30 per seat,” Cryer said. “We have some concerts in smaller venues where there are only 110 seats, and we have paid $3,000-plus for the artist. So these are valuable seats.”
The concert series is made possible with the help of widespread fundraising, including some key sponsors in and around town, and formative support by the Greenwich Arts Council. A typical show runs about 50 minutes. A mother of two young daughters, Cryer says she got the idea five years ago when she moved back to Greenwich, where she had grown up, and noticed no local musical programming for young people.
Doesn’t a concert series catering to youngsters run the risk of disruptions?
“Yes, on occasion a parent has to sneak out with a child who is upset, but typically those are very young children,” Cryer said. “The concerts are designed for anyone who can enjoy 50 minutes of music. That’s often not an infant.”
Curiosity Concerts is about more than putting on shows. Two days before Sonic Escape goes onstage at the Civic Center, they will be visiting Family Centers Head Start preschools in town, putting on music workshops for the children, whom Cryer hopes will be sufficiently interested by what they see to get their parents to take them to the show.
“We’re trying to go deeper in our outreach, reaching families less well-served by musical enrichment,” she said.
After “Echoing Voices,” five more Curiosity Concerts are scheduled in and near town to fill out the season: Sruli & Lisa’s Family Klezmer Band on Feb. 21 at the Greenwich Arts Council, The Woodwind Quintet of the New Haven Symphony Orchestra at Greenwich Library on March 20, Musicians from Ravinia at Treetops in Stamford April 17, the Russian music duo of Oleg Kruglyakov and Terry Boyarsky at the Garden Education Center in Cos Cob on May 15, and Tom Chapin and Friends at Greenwich Library on June 11.
