Every age. Every school. No ticket price.
Your orchestra runs programs for kids from age two through the year they leave for conservatory — school visits, in-class workshops, youth concerts, instrument demonstrations, and time with living composers. Everyone eighteen and under gets in free, and so does every college student.
39,200+
Free student & college tickets since 2014
Ages 2–18
Toddler through senior year
60–70
High schoolers on stage each year
$0
What a student ticket costs
How it all started
A room full of women went first.
In 2019, Impact 100 of Indian River County awarded your orchestra $100,000 for something listed on their books as, simply, IRC Music Education Programs. At the time that is exactly what it was — a listing. An idea, a plan on paper, and no money behind it.
Impact 100 works by pooling. Hundreds of women each give $1,000, every dollar goes into one fund, and the members themselves read the proposals and vote on who receives the full hundred thousand. Nothing is held back for overhead. No one funds a slice and waits to see how you do. They hand over the whole thing at once and trust you to build it.
That grant is the reason music education exists here at all. Everything below grew out of it.
A grant starts something. Keeping it alive year after year is a different job. Michele Wallace Campanelli picked that up — she wrote the stories these concerts are built on, and helped fund the performances that told them. Donors across Brevard and Indian River County have carried it since. Seven years on, the programs reach thousands of students a year, and every one of them is still free.
To the members of Impact 100 Indian River: thank you for going first.
Four programs, one ladder
A kid can start at two and never leave.
Ages 2–5
Once Upon an Orchestra
Four small concerts, one for each instrument family — strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion. Kid-sized, story-driven, and short enough for a two-year-old’s attention span. This season they’re at the Vero Beach Museum of Art.
Grades 1–3
Children’s Concerts
Several thousand first, second, and third graders in Vero Beach every year, most of them hearing a live orchestra for the first time. They learn what the instruments are called, what a conductor actually does, and that a concert hall is a place they’re allowed to be.
High school
Side by Side
Sixty to seventy high school musicians from Brevard and Indian River counties get coached by our players, then sit in the section with them for the concert. Same stands, same music, same stage. Built with their band and orchestra directors.
In memory · 1971–2025
Michele Wallace Campanelli
To us, she was our superhero.
Michele Wallace Campanelli was a fierce and vibrant champion of the arts whose influence will continue to inspire us for generations to come.
Her work was highlighted and performed by your orchestra throughout our history. She created some of our most beloved children’s concerts, including Musicians Are Superheroes, Land of the Gnomes, Music at the Watering Hole, Back to the Watering Hole, and Ella Loves Elvis. These were more than concerts. They were imaginative worlds—full of music, joy, humor, and wonder—created to open a child’s heart and mind to the possibilities of art.
Nothing made Michele happier than making other people happy. She understood that the arts are not meant to exist at a distance. They are meant to be shared, experienced, and created together. She brought that belief into everything she did: with fierce commitment, tremendous imagination, and a generosity of spirit that made everyone around her feel more alive.
Michele was a warrior, a quiet storm, and an extraordinary creative force. She cared deeply, worked tirelessly, and walked the walk in everything she believed. She stood up for artists. She believed in children. She believed in the power of music and the importance of bringing people together through the arts.
Her hard work, vision, encouragement, and support helped shape this orchestra into what it is today. Quite simply, we would not be here without her.
Her legacy lives on in every child who discovered something new through her work, in every artist who was encouraged by her belief, and in every audience member who experienced the joy she helped create.
We will miss her deeply. We will remember her with gratitude. And we will carry her spirit forward every time we gather to make art together.
Aaron T. Collins
Artistic Director & Conductor
Six shows, all hers
Watch her work.
Musicians Are Superheroes
Musicians Are Superheroes: Part II
Land of the Gnomes — watch
Music at the Watering Hole — watch
Back to the Watering Hole
Ella Loves Elvis — watch
Teachers and school administrators
Bring us to your school.
School visits, in-class workshops, instrument demonstrations, and reserved seats at a children’s concert — tell us your grade levels and what you’re working on, and we’ll figure out what fits.
None of it comes back in ticket revenue — the students don’t buy tickets.
