Education
How I See Music is a free arts education workshop from Festival Napa Valley’s Arts for All initiatives, serving students, seniors, and veterans across Napa County. Each year, the program reaches every third-grade student at a non-charter school in Napa Valley Unified School District, along with participants at senior activity centers and community centers. Combining deep listening with hands-on painting, How I See Music invites participants to explore orchestral music and express what they hear, feel, and imagine.
Led by Festival Napa Valley education staff, How I See Music workshops begin with deep listening: noticing the instruments, the changes in the music, and the images and emotions it stirs. Participants then translate those responses into original paintings using color, line, and shape. Informed by practices used in therapeutic arts settings, the workshop builds focus, emotional vocabulary, and connection across generations. It reflects the Festival’s belief that music enriches the human experience and helps create a thriving, healthy, and engaged community. There are no wrong answers; only more than 1,200 different ways of hearing the same piece of music.
Every summer, the music comes full circle. Selected paintings fill the onstage LED screens as a full orchestra performs the featured piece live during the Festival’s Summer Season, and participants and their families see their work become part of the performance. A video installation of recent artwork is also exhibited at CIA at Copia in July and August.
Teachers participating in How I See Music can use the classroom kit to prepare students for the workshop and extend the learning afterward.
To bring a free workshop to your school or senior center, please contact the Education Department.
2027 - Claude Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
2026 - Aaron Copland's Hoedown
2025 - Felix Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream
2024 - George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue
2023 - Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2
2022 - Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony
How I See Music is funded in part by Kaiser Permanente.
