Recital Theme Ideas!

Written By Crystal Lile

Recital Theme Ideas



Many of us have themed lesson/session plans for the month, but have you ever thought about having a themed recital for your music students? This is more than just a “spring” theme, or a “Christmas” theme. Along with a themed recital invitation, themed recital program, and decorating for the recital, you can also have your students choose pieces to play that go along with the theme and even ask them to dress up! 



Here are some themes that we’ve done over the years:



Candy Land

For this recital, we decorated with lots of oversized lollipops and gumdrops in pastel colors and the students played pieces like Candy Corner by Elizabeth Greenleaf and Spoonful of Sugar from Mary Poppins. 









Christmas Movie Night

This was our most recent recital theme, and it was a lot of fun! Each student was assigned a different Christmas movie to play music from: Home Alone, The Grinch, Rudolph, The Polar Express, etc. It’s exciting for audience members to hear and recognize pieces from Christmas movies that they also cherish every year!







 













Winter Wonderland//Ugly Christmas Sweater

These were two pretty classic and self-explanatory themes for our Christmas recitals. We had lots of snowflakes, fake snow, and forest-y winter-y goodness for “Winter Wonderland” and played pieces like Jingle Bells, Go Tell it on the Mountain, Forbidden Forest (Wendy Stevens) and Little Snowman (Faber). 

Ugly Christmas Sweater had a lot of tacky and fun red & green plaid and silly sweater patterns! The students played classic Christmas pieces like Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree and We Wish You a Merry Christmas. 










       

















Game On!

This was a fun and unique theme we did for our spring recital one year! We had a practice incentive going for the whole semester that involved a PacMan that “ate” the dots when they moved towards their practice goals. There were prizes for hitting certain milestones, and the recital had a video/board game theme! Students played pieces from popular video games like Sonic the Hedgehog and The Legend of Zelda and Minecraft. 







     










Some other recital theme ideas that could have great pieces of music to play with them, along with some super fun decor, are:

  • A Night on Broadway (songs from popular musicals like Wicked, Annie, Hamilton, etc.)

  • The Greatest Showman (can be songs from the film or anything circus-related)

  • Disney’s Greatest Hits (self-explanatory but this one can be made even more fun by having students dress up as Disney characters!)

  • Around the World (music from different countries/cultures; can also have fun food and clothing represented)

  • Fairy Tales & Legends (choosing a classic fairy tale or story like Jack & the Beanstalk, and dressing up as characters and playing pieces that fit the theme)









What other ideas do you have for fun recital themes? Have you ever done this with your studio or students?

We think it’s so fun, especially for kids, to incorporate themes into everything we do!
















Written by Molly Harrell, MT-BC







Crystal Lile
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