Learning in Concert

Learning in Concert is an in-school partnership program with the NBSO and over forty local elementary schools in southeastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. It uses a concept-based arts integration model where a musical concept is explored alongside other art and academic areas that authentically share the same concept. The Learning in Concert program is designed as a unified, comprehensive, three-phase curriculum project spanning an entire school year. The program begins with an in-school, arts integrated assembly concert program, followed by individual classroom lessons partnering the NBSO Education Director with individual classroom teachers and students, primarily third graders. The third phase is the culminating event where students’ year-long creative work and collaborations are featured and performed at the annual Young People’s Concerts. More than 8,000 students will participate this year, including all second and third grade students from New Bedford Public Schools. 

Learning in Concert 2026-2027: Designing Stability in Music and Engineering

This Learning in Concert program explores how composers and structural engineers create stability through patterns of support, spacing, and reinforcement. Students will discover how music and engineering both rely on carefully organized systems to create strength, continuity, and coherence over time. 

The curriculum draws parallels between harmonic cadences and foundational structural supports, showing how both provide points of arrival, balance, and long-term stability. Metric groupings and rhythmic organization are compared to the repeating framework of posts, joists, and beams that distribute weight and maintain structural integrity.

In the classroom, students will compose music that demonstrates stability in harmony, meter and rhythm, and then build physical structures out of wooden materials that replicate their musical design.

View Past Programs