Denver Children's Choir

Music Education

5 Benefits of Music Education

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As children around the world head back to the classroom, we wanted to share some key research from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Ontario, Canada about the benefits of music education. According to their research, learning to sing “…leads to changes in a child’s brain that make it more likely they will reach their full cognitive and academic potential.” Here are their top 5 benefits of music education:

  • • Speech & Reading: young children taking music lessons showed dramatic improvement in their verbal intelligence after only four weeks of music training. ₁
  • • Academic Success: elementary school students in music education programs had 20% improvement in standardized tests of English and Math. ₂
  • • IQ: researchers showed greater increases in full scale IQ scores among children in music lessons versus children with no extra lessons. ₃
  • • Working Memory: individuals who are musically trained show better working memory abilities than those who are not. ₄
  • • Creativity: scientists found a marked a significant difference in communication between the right and left sides of the brain, which foster creativity, in individuals with musical training than in those without. ₅

In addition to our focus on cultural bridge-building and musical excellence, The Denver Children’s Choir’s focus on music education is central to our mission.

Annually, the DCC’s Neighborhood Choir Program serves over 200 children, ages 7-18, through 16 different choir ensemble programs around the Denver metro area. Our core training choirs are available at three neighborhood locations in addition to 7 in-school choir programs at 5 DPS schools, 4 choirs during school hours and 3 choirs before school to better accommodate our low-income participants, who get dropped off early for free breakfast. Many of our singers would not have access to a formal music education without DCC’s community choir programming.

Participants rehearse weekly to develop musicianship skills such as reading music and harmonizing, develop social skills like leadership and teamwork, and learn a culturally diverse repertoire. Our fall semester culminates with multiple concerts involving all of our singers. For our spring concert, Harmony of Children, all of our singers will perform on one stage together. Throughout the year, our singers will collaborate with local artists. Singers are given the opportunity to learn music with children from all over Denver, engage with one another, grow from differences, express their true selves, and find inner joy. Our music programming emphasizes artistic excellence, skill development, a variety of cultural perspectives.

One of our singers says it best: “I am so grateful to be a part of this community. Everyone is so supportive, and I love having friends that are so different who go to different schools that I wouldn’t know without choir.”

And, according to Albert Einstein: “The theory of relativity occurred to me by intuition, and music is the driving force behind this intuition. My parents had me study the violin from the time I was six. My new discovery is the result of musical perception.”

Albert Einstein
  1. Sylvain Moreno et al, Musical Training Influences Linguistic Abilities in Eight-year-old Children: More Evidence for Brain Plasticity, Cerebral Cortex, (Volume 19, Issue 3, 2009)
  2. C.M. Johnson and J.E. Memmott, Examination of Relationships between Participants in School Music Programs of Differing Quality and Standardized Test Results, Journal of Research in Music Education (Winter 2006, Volume 54, Number 4)
  3. E. Glenn Schellenberg, Music Lessons Enhance IQ (Psychological Science, 15)
  4. E.M. George, D. Coch, Music training and working memory: An ERP study, J. Neuropsychologia, Vol. 49, issue 5, April 2011
  5. Gottfried Schlaug, The Brain of Musicians – A Model for Functional and Structural Adaptation

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Staying Connected during COVID

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The DCC found creative ways to adapt to the circumstances resulting from COVID-19. When schools in the US closed, the DCC music staff worked very hard to produce excellent online content to make choir social and accessible. With a quick turnaround, DCC’s programming was adapted to “DCC Learning Centers.” Through online learning portals created specifically for DCC singers, youth had a resource for musicianship skills development during remote times when schools were forced to discontinue in-person learning.

Exercises for sight reading, rhythm, and pitch were available, as well as song recordings, for the children to continue to build their repertoire. Participants were encouraged to engage socially as well as academically, to foster both social and musicianship growth. These online learning centers provide a formal platform to involve singers on both an education level, through music instruction, and on a social engagement level.

Over the summer months of 2020, the staff brainstormed and came up with a plan to offer the most diverse and exciting curriculum they could conceive of to meet the needs of our precious DCC singers that were sequestered in their rooms. Below is our proud list of DCC Enrichment Courses:

• Multiple musicianship/sightreading/theory classes for all levels
• “Jazz and Race in America”
• 4 unique vocal technique classes including beginning pedagogy, classical, and jazz
• 3 songwriting courses from beginner, advanced, and one on the blues
• Ethnomusicology
• Guest Artist Art Jones, Founder and Chair Emeritus of The Spirituals Project, led a class called “The Wisdom of the Spirituals”
• Los Mocochetes (local Xicana Funk band) led a class about Mexican Music
• An up-and-coming jazz artist from New York, Sammy Rae, graced us with a mini performance followed by a Q&A session for our singers.
• “The Harmony of Children” – a class that provided a safe space for our singers to listen to and share honestly with each other about the topic of race in order to bridge gaps, deepen compassion, and demonstrate what it means to be in true harmony with others. PhD psychologist, Christine Chao helped facilitate this discussion.

In addition, DCC music staff gave individual lessons to singers who needed more time rehearsing songs beyond our weekly group rehearsals and made sure that all singers in every ensemble were able to participate in the virtual songs that they rehearsed each week. Many of our singers did not have the means or ability to make videos on their own. DCC, following CDC protocol, scheduled video sessions at our office, and at times went to singers’ homes to make the videos.

All ensembles met weekly on Zoom and produced over 40 virtual choral productions culminating in a holiday and spring concert. Denver7’s Lisa Hidalgo Emceed both of our virtual Songs of the Season and Harmony of Children concerts.

Our very first virtual choir project was our most special. We gathered our 115 online singers and 40 of our amazing alums to produce “In This Very Room”. This song is special to all of our singers as it closes our annual holiday concert. The fall of 2020 made the song more meaningful because everyone was “in their very own room” to make the video. If you have not viewed this production, please take 4 minutes to do so. Bring tissue!

DCC Singers and Alumni come together for In This Very Room.

DCC Music Director, Lisa Cameron, sent this note to our families at the height of the pandemic:
“The Choir is busy rehearsing each week…online! We have a very enthusiastic group of singers. I have to say, online learning and teaching is a more intense experience than rehearsing in person! However, the joy of seeing our singers engage with each other each week, hearing their voices on recordings and on videos, listening to their suggestions on how to make a rehearsal run smoothly, and the amount that they care about getting their assignments and notes correctly, make it all worthwhile.”

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