Music as the "Fourth R" 

Welcome to the Verizion Education and Community Outreach portal of the WVSO website!

This section, sponsored by Verizon and  the Verizon Foundation, highlights a variety of programs for students and adults. Every program, concert and interaction has the potential to be an enlightening experience and a chance to bring diverse groups of people together in common dialog.

Recognizing the realities and challenges that schools throughout West Virginia and Central Appalachia face in incorporating and funding music and arts education, the WVSO is undertaking ground-breaking work to find creative ways to include music education as part of the growing wave of interdisciplinary instruction. Music adds interesting and vital contextual depth to our understanding of key concepts such as math and science. A significant body of research has proven that the study of music is critical to cognitive development, critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making across many different learning disciplines.

The WVSO is creating ground-breaking educational material, programs, and concerts that forge a path for educators and the general public to utilize music to better an understanding of the world and universe around us.

This season we continue our over-arching educational mission to use music as a central platform to make connections to math, science, reading, and humanities topics. This season also sees a continued strong expansion of our programs into southeastern Ohio and  the eastern counties of Kentucky as the WVSO continues to hone a leadership role in educational and community outreach throughout Central Appalachia with continued national distinction.