(SYSO photo: Musician mentors student as they prepare to perform together onstage)
Southwest Seattle Super String Saturday is back again this year – a great day for enjoying the work of outstanding young musicians and inspiring kids who might want to follow in their footsteps. WSB is proud to be a media sponsor again this year. Here are the details:

On Saturday January 25 from 10 am- 1 pm, a free community event, Southwest Seattle Super String Saturday at Chief Sealth International High School at 2600 SW Thistle Street, kicks off with an inspiring performance by one of America’s premier youth orchestras, the Seattle Youth Symphony.

Following the performance, young violin, viola, cello and bass players from Southwest Seattle schools fill Chief Sealth IHS with the sound of their hard work and dedication. This event celebrates the elementary and middle school string players who are receiving coaching by professional musicians hired by the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras.

The free public performance by Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra features Serge Prokofiev’s powerful ballet score for Romeo and Juliet – a work that has become one of the most revered orchestral scores composed for dance. The mini-concert continues with Carl Maria von Weber’s Overture to the Der Freischutz, a Romantic-era opera inspired by German folk music.

After the public concert, violin, viola, cello and bass students from Southwest elementary schools (Concord, Roxhill, Sanislo, Arbor Heights, West Seattle, and Highland Park) and Denny International Middle School participate in an array of activities including instrument technique clinics led by top-level Youth Symphony musicians and SYSO coaches and learning how to play in a chamber music ensemble. Then the excitement builds as the string students join the Youth Symphony musicians on stage and are mentored by their high school-aged musical counterparts. All the musicians play “side-by-side” in this large orchestral setting, with the younger students inspired by the level of performance demonstrated by their older peers.

This is an event for the entire family and includes an “instrument petting zoo” organized by the West Seattle Community Orchestras introducing younger children to string instruments, and SYSO coaches and school music teachers on hand to discuss how parents can support their child’s musical learnng. Refreshments and resources are also available.

This event showcases Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras’ Southwest Seattle String Project, an initiative that provides professional musician “coaches” to work alongside public school music teachers and lead small group and individualized instruction.

(SYSO photo: Double bass musician Todd Gowers coaches Denny IMS students)
This service is provided by SYSO at no cost to the schools or the families because SYSO is committed to enabling equitable access to arts education, especially in areas which historically have had lower participation rates in instrumental music due to economic barriers.

SYSO provides this program free to the Southwest Seattle public schools because of generous support from national and local funders. In fact, last month Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras was one of just twenty-three American orchestras selected by the League of American Orchestras to receive a 2013-14 Getty Education and Community Investment Grant specifically to fund SYSO’s school programs. To learn more about how to donate to SYSO’s school programs, contact info@syso.org.

West Seattle Blog and Classical KING-FM are Media Sponsors for this event. For information about the Southwest Seattle Super String Saturday event, please contact Kathleen Allen, Director of Education, Communications and Partnerships at Kathleen@syso.org.

Here’s our coverage of last year’s SWSSS event.

(Photo tweeted Wednesday night by @Russell_News)
With two days until The Game, Seahawks fever is intensifying. Again last night, as visible from West Seattle’s northeast-facing shores, the Russell Investments building displayed #12 – tweaked since the Friday test shown here. The photo above is from Russell’s Twitter feed (we took a photo from Seacrest earlier in the evening, but that was before the display reached its final configuration). Update: Russell says this will be repeated FRIDAY night. Meantime, some of what’s happening today/tonight:

MICROHOUSING-RULES-RELATED APPEAL HEARING CONTINUES: Starting at 1:45 pm, testimony resumes in the Hearing Examiner’s chambers downtown, in a community-activist-led challenge to a city decision that the proposed rules for “microhousing” don’t need environmental review. This picks up where Tuesday left off. (Municipal Tower downtown, 40th floor)

CHALLAH BREAD-MAKING WORKSHOP: 5:30 pm at Delridge Community Center. Details in our calendar listing – contact the center to see if there’s room. (4501 Delridge Way SW)

Tonight’s peninsula-wide event:

WEST SEATTLE ART WALK, JANUARY EDITION: 6-9 pm, 18 venues around West Seattle welcome you to see local art and, in many cases, meet the artist(s) whose work is on display. Here’s the walking map/venue list for the winter quarter, which includes WSB sponsors Chaco Canyon Organic Café, Click! Design That Fits, Hotwire Online Coffeehouse, Wallflower Custom Framing, West Seattle Cyclery, West Seattle Office Junction, and a dozen other local businesses supporting the arts; see artist previews on the official WS Art Walk website.

COLLEGE APPLICATION SUPPORT: Tonight’s event offering support for college and financial-aid applications is at Chief Sealth International High School, but it’s open to all local 12th graders and their families. Details in our calendar listing. 6 pm, Sealth Library. (2600 SW Thistle)

MINI-OPEN HOUSE ON METRO CUTS: Tonight Metro reps will be at the North Highline Unincorporated Area Council‘s monthly meeting in White Center, which will start half an hour earlier than usual – 6:30 pm, to facilitate Metro’s mini-open house on the proposed cuts. (1243 SW 112th)

READ THE KORAN IN 4 WEEKS: The next session led by First Lutheran Church of West Seattle pastor Rev. Ron Marshall, who’s been teaching this class for more than a decade, starts tonight at 7 pm – details in our calendar listing. (4105 California SW)