Hey, kids and parents: Want to travel around the world without leaving Fort Wayne? Want to hear great stories, do fun activities, and enjoy fascinating music? 

Well, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic Orchestra isn’t just about their big, imposing Masterworks concerts. They also give concerts for children and their families and sponsor Youth Orchestras with high school musicians and singers.

To learn about the Youth Orchestras and Family Series, Whatzup spoke with The Phil’s conductor Troy Webdell, who also conducts the South Shore Orchestra in Valparaiso. 

Orchestral musicians play music from all over the world, and the lucky ones get to travel all over, too. Between his concerts here, Webdell toured China with musicians from the U.S. for a decade, playing Western and Chinese classical music. 

Youth Orchestras

Conducted by Webdell, Youth Orchestras will perform their fall concert at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 22, at the Purdue University Fort Wayne’s Auer Performance Hall. They will be joined by the Fort Wayne Children’s Choir and the PFW Chorus.

Youth Orchestras will also be at Grand Wayne Center during the annual Night of Lights on Wednesday, Nov. 22.

The season continues into 2024 when Youth Orchestras perform at The FAME Festival on March 16 at Grand Wayne Center. Their spring concert is March 24 at Auer Performance Hall. 

The season finale is May 12 at Auer.

DÍa de los Muertos

The Family Series includes four concerts that take families to Mexico, China, the Middle East, and back to Fort Wayne. 

Each Saturday event starts at 10 a.m. with an hour of children’s and family activities a. There will be hands-on crafts and storytelling by folks from Fort Wayne Museum of Art and Allen County Public Library. Sweetwater will also provide the Instrument Playground, where kids and parents can play instruments the orchestra plays. 

Then at 11 a.m., Webdell will lead the orchestra of 50 musicians in a one-hour concert of classical and pop music.

“During the pandemic, when no one was performing, I did this radio show called Stories in Music on WBNI, and it featured children’s books with orchestral music,” Webdell said. “Last season, we made it come to life” with live concerts. This season, “we’re taking a twist on it; it’s going to be world music.”

Día de los Muertos: A Day of the Dead Celebration kicks the series off Saturday, Oct. 28. Fort Wayne’s own children’s dance group Amaneceres de Mexico, with their colorful costumes, will perform. The music features “Remember Me” from the 2017 Disney Pixar movie Coco, Camille Saint-Saën’s spooky Danse Macabre, and short pieces by living Mexican composers Mariana Villanueva and Arturo Marquez.

Amaneceres de Mexico is a children’s traditional folk dance group, or ballet folklorico de niños, that have been performing at local events year-round for 20 years. “Amaneceres” means “sunrises.” The group has 20 girls and boys as young as 3. 

Director Margarita Walley started dancing in her hometown of Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. As a young woman, she led a group that got to perform on TV in El Paso, Texas. She has called Fort Wayne home for 25 years.

Mexican ballet folklorico showcases couples dancing in varied styles from different states around Mexico, complete with lots of costume changes. Walley, who has trained and rehearsed the children in her group year-round for a generation, is proud to say she makes most of those elaborate, colorful costumes herself. 

“I’m a busy girl,” she said in an understatement.

The children of Amaneceres will also dance at Fort Wayne Museum of Art on Nov. 5 at the conclusion of their community Día de los Muertos exhibition. That day will be full of family activities.

Chinese New Year

For Chinese New Year, The Philharmonic will present Year of the Dragon: A Lunar New Year Celebration on Jan. 27 at Arts United Center. 

The performance is based around the book The Peasant Prince, about the famous dancer Li Cunxin. The Fort Wayne Chinese Organization and Sister Cities, representing Taizhou, Zhejiang, China, will be there. 

The Fort Wayne Children’s Choir will sing with the orchestra, and Webdell will lead pieces from living Chinese composers. They will bring in a soloist from New York playing the traditional Chinese zither, the gu zheng. 

Magic Carpet Ride

On March 2, The Philharmonic presents Aladdin’s Magic Lamp: Music of the Middle East at Auer Performance Hall. 

It’s a collaboration with Fort Wayne Arab Fest and will involve Indiana musicians who play traditional Middle Eastern music. Short pieces from living composers Fazil Say of Turkey and Halim El-Dabh of Egypt will be featured, along with excerpts from the beloved Arab-themed Scheherazade from Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov. The concert will conclude with a totally awesome suite by Alan Menken from the Disney movie Aladdin.

Appealing finale

The Family Series concludes April 6 at Arts United Center with Johnny Appleseed Goes to the Symphony, featuring the book by Lori Haskins Houran. 

The Fort Wayne Youtheatre and narrators will tell the story of Johnny Appleseed. Webdell will conduct the orchestra playing Chickasaw composer Jerod Tate’s Okanogan suite Spirit Chief Names the Animal People, along with The Journey of Johnny Tin Cap, by the Philharmonic’s own composer Adrian Mann. The orchestra will also play music from composers Calvin Custer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, and Aaron Copland.

To learn more and to buy tickets, go online to fwphil.org.