Picture the Music
Spark your students’ imagination and creativity with Picture the Music. This FREE, cross-curricular program invites students in grades K-6 to experience music and art as powerful strategies for emotional regulation. Through listening to music and using painting or drawing to express how it makes them feel, students will begin to understand and process their emotions in new and healthy ways.
This year’s program features Arturo Márquez’s Conga del Fuego Nuevo. You and your students can hear this piece performed live at an SLSO Education Concert.
After exploring the music and responding with art, submit your students’ artwork into the Picture the Music art competition. Select works of art will be honored at an awards ceremony and featured in a traveling exhibit. See the Teacher Guide for specific details including how to prepare and submit student entries.
Congratulations to the 2024 Picture the Music Finalists!
Thank you to all the teachers who participated in PTM! During the 2023/2024 school year, more than 16,000 students from 86 schools listened to “The Dance of the Butterfly” from Albert Roussel’s The Spider’s Feast and created paintings and drawings that expressed their own creative thought and emotions inspired by the music. The top 100 finalists were selected from 534 pieces of art that were submitted. Here are your 2024 Picture the Music winners:
Maestro Awards Winners
Grades K-3: Sophia Cortadillo • Grade 2, Daniel Boone Elementary School, The Excited Violin
Grades 4-6: Dora Yu • Grade 5, Ladue Fifth Grade Center, Two Sides to Every Story
To see a complete list of the top 100 finalists, click here or view the gallery below.
Thank you to our Picture the Music judges for providing their expertise.
Latausha Cox
Assistant Educator – Teacher and Student Learning, Saint Louis Art Museum
Jennifer Fisher
Assistant Teaching Professor and Coordinator of Art Education, UMSL
Dr. Louis Lankford
Professor Emeritus – Director of Art Education, UMSL
Olivia Mendelssohn
Assistant Educator, Kemper Art Museum
Debbie McConnell
Retired Art Specialist, Parkway School District
Linda Packard
Retired Art Specialist, Ladue School District
SLSO education programs are presented by:
