Program Description

Lyric Opera of Kansas City is proud to offer touring performances of Sketchbook for Ollie to schools across the Kansas City area. Newly commissioned by the Lyric, Sketchbook for Ollie is aligned to music curricular standards and created specifically for students in grades 3-5. The piece prioritizes social-emotional learning, interactivity, and music fundamentals. To amplify the experience, teachers will receive access to curricular resources to ensure students acquire tools to unlock opera’s potential.

Production

Eight-year-old OLLIE questions the meaning of life after the death of his grandmother. He is frustrated with grownups avoiding his tough but important questions. The only answer that satisfies him comes from his AUNT LEEZA, a composer, who shows him that life is like her music sketchbook. She shows him a wide variety of methods to make and share the ongoing compositions of our lives, whether professionally or through other altruistic interactions. OLLIE comes to understand how the contents of his own sketchbook can affect others’ in an ongoing sonic realization of everyone’s experience. With these new tools, OLLIE creates his own song involving the whole family and audience. AUNT LEEZA gives OLLIE his own blank sketchbook for the hard questions yet to come.

Performances include access to curricular resources, pre- and post- performance activities facilitated by Lyric Opera education staff, and a Q&A with the cast.

Date & Time

• January 29 - February 14, 2024

Cost

$595 per performance.
If scheduling multiple performances in one day at the same location, contact Director of Education and Community Engagement Neal Long at nlong@kcopera.org or 816-802-6054 for a quote.

This program is a component of Opera Unlocked, Lyric Opera’s comprehensive and sequential in-school education program.