Bluegrass video for toddlers from Kate & The Lost Boys

Kate Christopher Goldbas is a musician and music teacher in New York City who has developed a unique way to involve young students in the rhythmic aspects of music. Utilizing the sort of musical game playing at the heart of the Kindermusik and Suzuki educational systems, Kate has begun using YouTube videos to demonstrate and apply these concepts with live music accompaniment.

Her training is in vocal music, and Kate sings songs that children can readily learn, accompanied by a group of talented folk and bluegrass musicians of her acquaintance. The group takes the name, Kate & The Lost Boys, and features Bennett Sullivan on banjo, Sam Reider on accordion, Jeff Picker on bass, and Kate’s husband Jake Goldbas on percussion.

Kate shared a few words about her goals with this project, and a recent video they shot to encourage young children to be part of the live music experience.

“After receiving my degree from Manhattan School of Music I accepted a position at the wonderful Diller-Quaile School of Music in New York City. My new position, fused my two greatest talents, singing and engaging young children through music.

At Diller-Quaile I teach early childhood music classes and most of my students are 4 years old and younger. It wasn’t long before the parents in my adult-child classes were clamoring for me to record videos for their children to watch at home.

At Diller-Quaile we teach using live accompaniment and base our lesson plans around American and world folk music. Liza Jane is always a number-one hit in my classes and so I knew this was a song I wanted to record.

I quickly realized there is a drought of live, kid-friendly, well-played children’s music videos on YouTube. Most videos are produced using electronically programmed instruments and animation. I wanted to engage children while also exposing them to great live music at the same time. An added bonus? Parents enjoy our music as well!

I reached out to a few of my friends, who also happen to be world class bluegrass musicians, lucky me, and voila – Kate and The Lost Boys was born!

We are early on in our quest to bring bluegrass music, and all music, to pre-school aged children and we hope to post more and more videos as our following grows!”

 

Current and future videos from Kate & The Lost Boys will be posted on Golbas’ YouTube channel. If you have young children, grandchildren, siblings or friends, share the link to get them started on the right foot.