Kids Commute: Overture week!

By Kate Botello,

Published September 3, 2024 at 7:40 AM EDT

Design for The Magic Flute: The Hall of Stars in the Palace of the Queen of the Night, Act 1, Scene 6, print, after Karl Friedrich Schinkel, Karl Friedrich Thiele — Design for The Magic Flute: The Hall of Stars in the Palace of the Queen of the Night, Act 1, Scene 6

For the beginning of Kids Commute Season 8, we thought it would be fun to hear music that is often heard as a beginning. This week: all about overtures!

Welcome to Season 8 of Kids Commute! We hope you had a fabulous summer and are ready for a fun new season of our daily shows for kids and their grownups.

It’s Overture week! It felt fitting to start off this season with a musical beginning as well.

So, what is an overture?

An overture is the intro - the teaser, the musical beginning - to a larger piece of music, like a ballet, opera, musical, or other musical suite. It gives you a taste of some musical themes to come later in the larger work and is almost always purely instrumental - meaning, there aren’t any lyrics or singers in it. And, it often sets the tone or mood for what you’re about to hear!

Overtures we'll hear this week:

"The Magic Flute"/Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
"Shuffle Along"/Eubie Blake
"Open the Door"/Gwyneth Walker
"The Cowboys"/John Williams

Kids Commute - Overture Week: Tuesday

"The Magic Flute" Overture by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, performed by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

Classical Sprouts: Papageno And 'The Magic Flute'

KC Overture Week! Wednesday: Shuffle Along Overture

"Shuffle Along" Overture by Eubie Blake, performed by the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra

KC Overture Week! Thursday: Open the Door

"Open the Door" Overture by Gwyneth Walker, performed by The Women's Philharmonic, conducted by JoAnn Falletta

Kids Commute - Overture Week! Friday: The Cowboys

Overture to "The Cowboys" by John Williams, performed by The Boston Pops

How to listen to Kids Commute:

Tune in to Classical IPR weekdays at 7:40 and 3:20, or listen any time by clicking the audio files above. You can also listen any time via the IPR app!

How to answer the Kids Commute Quizlet:

Each week, we present you with a brand-new Quizlet question to answer. We'll ask the question at the beginning of the week, and our pal Quizbot will provide daily clues until Thursday.

Text your answer to 231-237-7482 . If you get the answer right, Quizbot will let you know! Quizbot's very polite, though, and doesn't want to tell you if you got it wrong, so if you don't hear from Quizbot, keep trying with a new answer.

On Thursday at noon, we'll draw a name from all the Kids Commuters who got the answer right and award a lucky winner with this year's prize - a shiny, holographic Kids Commute Sticker! If it's your first time answering the Quizlet, we'll send your grownup a Google form to fill out so you can be eligible for our prize drawing. They'll only need to fill out the form one time.

On Friday's episode, we'll do what we call "shout-outs" - we'll read the names of every single Kids Commuter that got the answer right that week!

Good luck and thanks for listening to Kids Commute - no kid or commute required!