“It reminds me of how I used to see things when I was a kid. And it’s a way that I think a lot of us adults lose,” she said. I just think the way that they see the world is so brilliant. “I definitely get so many ideas from kids. Some - such as “Song In My Tummy” and “Chipmunk at the Gas Pump” - came from improvising suggestions on the fly. Others came from silly things she’d overhear kids say when she was riding the bus around the city. “I noticed I was having a lot more fun doing that and getting a lot more positive feedback, especially when parents started asking me to come and sing those songs at their kids’ birthday parties.”īerkner said the inspiration for many of her early songs came directly from asking the kids in her classroom what they wanted to sing about. “That was really my goal, making music feel organic and fun for young kids. “I felt like I could connect to them and give them a positive musical experience,” she said. Laurie Berkner creates a musical world for kids that’s bright, fun and engaging. Soon, instead of struggling to wrangle a room full of 3-year-olds, she had them marching around as pretend dinosaurs and scooping food up off the ground instead of roaring at each other, all by directing them through her songs. When she was getting her start as a music teacher at the Rockefeller University’s Child and Family Center in New York, a mentor taught her the key to working with children: Stop talking at them, and put it all in the music. She brings her solo act to Ravinia Festival Saturday morning for a family-friendly performance celebrating the 25th anniversary of her first album for young fans, “Whaddaya Think of That?” … I thought I don’t ever want to have to do that again, and it’s the thing at night that I want to get rid of.”īorn in France and raised in New Jersey, Berkner has now been working with children since the mid-’90s and performing for them full-time since the early 2000s. “I had to get up and do a party the next morning a couple of hours after I got home from the gig on Long Island. “I could be singing songs that I wrote to kids and families, having them screaming ‘Victor Vito’ and ‘We Are the Dinosaurs’ instead of ‘Freebird.’ They’re not drunk, and they’re loving each other and dancing and having this great experience that is much more fun,” she said. As the gig ended around 3 a.m., leaving her reeking of smoke after fielding drunk guys yelling suggestions, she questioned what she was doing there. The morning after a particularly late show in Long Island with her rock band, singer Laurie Berkner had an epiphany.
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