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Too Young to Retire is on sale in bookstores   nationwide and online. 

 Couple Creates Music to Change
Children's Listening Habits

After a long career that took them to Venezuela, Aruba and Eqypt, former engineer, Clyde Persons and his wife, Marjorie Kiel Persons, a music educator, returned to the United States with a business idea that introduces classical music to children in a whole new way.

Their system is based on recent research showing that music wires the brain, creating new neural pathways. Since classical music is more complex than popular music, it does a better job of wiring children's brains. When music is combined with words, both go into long-term memory. (See Music with the Brain in Mind by Eric Jensen.)

After the Persons settled in Morristown, N.J., Marjorie decided to add music, elementary and secondary education to her religious education and literature degree. While teaching music, she found that when she used lyrics with classical music, the children remembered it and loved it.

"I have a bad musical memory, so I started using lyrics to help me remember,” Marjorie explains. "Then when I used lyrics with the children, I found that it was by far the best way to connect children to classical music. When children recognize the themes, they will listen to a complete symphony with joy and understanding. While reading the lyrics they also gain literacy skills. They read with the flow and rhythm of the language and build vocabulary. They are motivated to read stories related to the music."

Marjorie writes "kid-friendly" educational lyrics to the most beautiful themes in classical music. “Kids sing along, Karaoke style. The lyrics usually contain the name of both composer and composition, and children remember both so quickly, you'll think it's magic – Classical Magic,” says Marjorie. "If children connect with classical music when they are very young, they will have a lifetime adventure with it. They will do better in school both academically and socially and music will enrich their lives in many ways."

Classical Magic®, the name of their company, has published four library quality books with CDs and related teaching materials covering 127 classical music themes. The book/CD combinations are library quality (hard-cover and smyth sewn) and fully illustrated with composer portraits and short biographies. They are organized by musical periods to help build an historical awareness.

Classical Magic's products are being used by parents with preschool children, children who can read by themselves, elementary classroom teachers, music teachers, librarians, and home-schoolers, as well as by college educators of elementary school teachers as an introductory music course.

Determined not to “kill classical music by being too serious about it,” Classical Magic products are “Light-hearted, very educational, easy to use, and fun,” designed to "change the music listening habits of America's children," Marjorie says. The books are sold primarily in the music education catalogs, on their website, www.classicalmagic.net  and on amazon.com.

A Prairie Schoolhouse Beginning

Now in their mid-70s, Clyde and Marjorie are a long way from the "little houses on the prairie" in South Dakota during the Great Depression where they grew up, and the one-room schoolhouse where “we really learned the fundamentals."  Says Clyde, "We didn't realize we were poor as there was no TV telling us what we didn't have.” They learned about frugality and hard work, earning money for college.  Marjorie is a summa cum laude graduate of Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. She later completed post-graduate studies at the University of Minnesota and at Kean College in Union, New Jersey.

They “retired” to the mountains of North Carolina close to Appalachian State University which has a good music department and music majors willing to help with recordings. They located a good recording studio near the university. “Everything we need for our retirement mission has been provided,” Marjorie says.

"This is the first time we've worked together on a project, and it's been wonderful. Clyde does all the things that I dislike! He's very good with accounting, contracts, and business in general. I do the writing and teaching part. We work together to present workshops/clinics as state music education conferences as well as home school conferences."

Don't be surprised when your three-year-old grandchild tells you that your cell phone is playing Mozart's Symphony No. 40 or identifies Beethoven's Fifth or Schubert's Unfinished Symphony on a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Just thank innovators, Marjorie and Clyde Persons, and Classical Music, Inc.  

www.classicalmagic.net
Classical Magic, Inc.
PO Box 1809
Banner Elk, NC 28604
828-898-7764
comapers@skybest.com