CSO For Kids

events 2 Minutes

One one-time participation in the discussion of the CSO youth programs and my readiness to be one of the CSO for Kids ambassadors keeps getting me unexpected benefits.

I had tickets for the “bigger kids concert” for last Saturday’s matinee, and about ten days before that, I received an invitation for the exclusive behind-the-scene tours, for which I happily signed us both. Since Anna is not exactly in a position to travel, on Friday, I took Haiawata to Milwaukee; Anna dropped Nadia off at the train station, and we got on the same train back to Chicago (as usual, the conductor said: hope to see you again soon! and I replied: you’ll see me very soon!

Saturday was the CSO day. We had this amazing backstage tour an hour before the concert:

We all went on stage!
A view form the stage
Behind the stage (almost under) – the traveling cases for musicians

We knew that the pianos were not rolled into the stage but rather lifted on a special elevating platform and were brought to the stage through the giant rectangular-shaped hole. The person who guided the tour explained that there is no room for the pianos at the back of the stage, and besides, you can’t roll a piano over a conductor’s podium.

Touching the organ
Musician’s mailboxes

After the concert, there was a whole hour of activities: the kids could do the scavenger hunt in the Arcade, explore the instruments in the Instrument pet zoon on the second floor of the Rotunda, learn a group dance on the third, make a tambourine on the fourth, and conduct the orchestra on the fifth floor!

Nadia made a tambourine with Kira’s portrait and then had forgotten it on the table, and we only realized it when we were out. There were just a couple of minutes left, and we rushed back. The tambourine was gone, but the usher looked at Nadia’s ready-to-cry face and called another staff to pull the dumpster, and together, they found Naida’s tambourine! I could not thank them enough!

After that, we had a very late lunch and got on the train back to Milwaukee, and then I got back on the same Haiawata train back to Chicago. Four train rides within 28 hours, not counting CTA and Metra, but totally worth it! I am so impressed with what CSO has done for kids and how helpful everybody was!

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Published by Hettie D.

My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996. I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future. I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life. As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.

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