Do Re Mi Concert

Do Re Mi Concert is an orchestra concert specifically targeted to children from age zero to age six. Presented by National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) in Taiwan, five pieces of all performed classical music were deliberately chosen for the accompanied animation derived from different children’s picture books. Music playing with accompanied animation is not a novel experiment. One can easily recall the wonderful memory of watching Mickey Mouse’s magical performance in Disney’s Fantasia (1940). However, the making of the animation for Do Re Mi concert still took into account several factors that might affect the final presentation of both music and animation. Among them is whether or not the narrative of the animation could be understood by the target audience -children under the age of six. The animation director collaborated with the music conductor and a consultant from the children’s book publisher came up with two kinds of narration-one stuck to the original stories of the books, presenting the animations in a more traditional linear way, one used graphic elements extracted from the picture books, reforming the story and interpret the narrative in a collage, non-linear way. From the observation of children’s reaction at the concert, the non-linear animation seemed to get more excitement from the children than the relatively linear ones.