What does music look like? For nearly 200 elementary students across Region IX and WFISD schools, the answer is taking shape through color, imagination, and creativity.
This fall, the Wichita Falls Symphony Orchestra’s revitalized Picture the Music program invites students to explore George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue through art. While listening to the piece in their classrooms, students create original artwork inspired by the sounds, rhythms, and emotions they hear.
On November 14, their art will be displayed at the WFSO’s season premiere concert, where students will also have the opportunity to hear Rhapsody in Blue performed live by a full symphony orchestra.
The most colorful 15 minutes in music
Composed in 1924, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue blends the sounds of jazz and classical music into a piece full of color, energy, and changing moods.
The color begins with the title itself. “Blue” refers to blue notes, the slightly bent, bittersweet notes borrowed from the blues. From the famous opening clarinet slide to bold brass and sweeping strings, the music offers plenty to spark young imaginations. The piano takes center stage with expressive solos that move between moments of quiet reflection and dramatic intensity. Its rhythms, melodies, and shifting emotions give students endless possibilities to translate what they hear into art. Every instrument family brings its own color, and kids can hear each one take over.
The mood never sits still, either. A rhapsody is a piece that drifts freely from one feeling to the next instead of following a set pattern, and this one swings from jittery to dreamy and back again. Gershwin called it a “musical kaleidoscope of America.”
Want to hear it before the concert? Pianist Kevin Cole, who joins the WFSO on November 14, has a recording on Spotify.
What’s happening in the classroom
Music, art, and classroom teachers work together to guide students through the creative process. Students begin by listening to Rhapsody in Blue, learning to identify the instrument families (strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion) and exploring how the music conveys different moods and emotions.
Students then translate what they hear into original artwork, drawing inspiration from the music’s rhythms, melodies, and sounds. Teachers can choose from a variety of mediums, including painting, collage, and colored pencil, allowing the project to complement their existing classroom curriculum while encouraging individual creativity.
Why paint a piece of music?
Turning sound into a picture is harder than it looks. The music is not just playing in the background. Students have to listen closely enough to form an opinion, then figure out how to show that opinion in color and shape.
Artists have been working on this for a long time. The painter Wassily Kandinsky thought of colors and shapes the way a composer thinks about notes, and he named some of his paintings “Compositions” and “Improvisations,” like pieces of music. Our students are working on the same question he was.
There’s also a practical upside to mixing subjects. Some kids live for music class. Others would happily spend all day with markers. A project like this gives both groups a way in, and the music kid and the art kid often end up pulling each other along.
The research backs it up
Some of the best evidence for this kind of program comes from right here in Texas. Researchers studied Houston’s Arts Access Initiative, which paired more than 40 elementary and middle schools with local arts organizations, and found real benefits for students. Kids in the program had fewer discipline problems and wrote better, and they showed more compassion for others. Elementary students in particular were more engaged in school. It didn’t cost much per student, either.
A single art project won’t do all of that on its own. But it’s part of a pattern that works: schools and local arts groups giving kids more chances to make things and hear things.
The moment we’re building toward
Picture the Music connects student creativity with live orchestral music. Students create artwork inspired by music, then have the opportunity to see their work displayed at a WFSO concert and hear the music performed live.
The program introduces students and their families to the symphony in a meaningful way, creating a connection between music, visual art, and the concert experience.
“Picture the Music is a wonderful avenue to overcoming the stereotypes that orchestral music is “boring” or “all sounds the same.” There are countless reasons why symphonic music is an exceptional art. The layers of harmonies, rhythms, dynamics, and instrumentation surrounding a melody make it a unique and engaging experience for listeners of all ages. Understanding how these musical elements were utilized to create varying themes to tell a story is inspiring and highlights the sheer creativity of composers. Now, with more competition than ever before in the music industry, it is crucial to ensure compositions, whether by Bach, Mozart, Prokofiev, or Gershwin, continue to stand the test of time.”
– Caroline Skeels, Director of Operations & Education
For parents: hang onto that pass
A couple of weeks before the concert, your child will bring home a Picture the Music Pass. Bring it to the Box Office when you arrive to redeem one free student ticket and one adult ticket for $10.
Come early! The exhibition opens at 6:00 PM and the concert starts at 7:00 PM.
The details
Rhapsody in Blue is Saturday, November 14, 2026, at First Baptist Church – Downtown, 1200 9th Street in Wichita Falls. The program also includes Chris Brubeck’s Rhythms of the Range and Elgar’s Enigma Variations.
No student in the program? The exhibition is worth the early arrival anyway. Tickets are on the event page.
