Musical youth

The final family concert of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra season looked like a scene from a 1950s family film Sunday at the Alex Theatre. There were happy fathers, busy mothers, doting grandparents and laughing kids in every direction.

The Instrumental Petting Zoo was in the theater courtyard. Volunteers from La Serna High School let everyone see what it was like to sit down, hold on to a French horn and blow (with wet wipes available in deference to flu season). Then there were the trombones, tubas, flutes and the ever popular drum set to try.

Many of the audience members were already long-term fans, and proud members of the chamber orchestra.

Then there were people like Lucille Renwick, who brought her husband and three children from West Los Angeles. She hadn’t known about the Alex Theatre before getting a flier about the concert in the mail, via one of her many museum memberships.

“Kids can look and touch and try out instruments, no matter how old or how young they are,” she said. “A piano isn’t the only instrument you can play.”

Rosanna Solis, visiting from Mexico with her 3-year-old son Joshua, heard about the concert from a friend, she said.

“He said it would be good,” she said.

Annie Suh of Encino brought her 6-year-old daughter, Samantha, because Samantha likes music, she said

“She plays the violin,” she said, adding that the concert itself only lasts about one hour. “This program is the perfect length.”

Once you walked in the theater door, you were handed a free bookmark by a young member of the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, wearing a red T-shirt with their logo, just before they went onstage. Off to one side was a tent with more volunteers, helping children and their parents do their own face painting.

In the opposite direction, in the downstairs lobby, was music teacher Amy Brehm leading the younger children in each new chorus of “Aiken Drum.” She drew arms, legs and noses on a picture of Aiken, based on the name of whatever vegetable or fruit was shouted out.

Up on the second floor, just outside of the balcony, there were the stringed instruments to hold and play with, in another extension of the Instrument Petting Zoo.

Rachel Fine, the executive director of the Los Angeles Children’s Chorus, was waiting down in the lobby for her family to arrive. She was full of praise for Jeffrey Kahane, the musical director of the chamber orchestra.