It’s a simple song with a memorable melody and a message about global unity. It's also an earworm that you may not be able to remove for several hours.
Disney’s It’s a Small World is being sung by a couple of hundred TK to 12th-grade Conejo Valley USD students. This time, however, it’s a new version, complete with a new verse.
"It's A Small World—it's just such a great song," said Frank LaGuardia, the Elementary Coordinator at Hillcrest Center for the Arts. "It's the song of peace and the song of togetherness and something that we all grew up listening to as a little kid."
It's part of a bigger all-district music festival at the Thousand Oaks Performing Arts Center.
"A lot of the students know these songs from the movies, but they don't know who wrote them," said LaGuardia. "Richard Sherman, unfortunately, passed away last May, and he basically has written the soundtrack of our childhoods. All those Disney movies and different things. Him and his brother...Richard Sherman."
"Before Richard Sherman passed, he wrote a new third verse because It's a Small World only has two verses. He wrote a third verse and he presented it to [Disney CEO] Bob Iger before he passed," explained LaGuardia.
"So we're going to sing the third verse at the end, it's like an extra special part, so just to kind of commemorate all the wonderful work that he and his brother did," he said.
The new verse will be integrated into the It’s a Small World attraction at Disneyland starting in July.
For these students, it’s an opportunity to perform the piece with an orchestra, said Lana Clark, the executive director of Conejo Schools Foundation. The orchestra is conducted by Richard Allen, Richard Sherman’s close friend and music arranger.
"I think for a lot of kids, it's learning that there is a pathway to a job in music, that this is something that there's a career in, that there are people behind these things that they experience in the world, and that there are opportunities in music besides just being a performer," said Clark.
"This is the 21st year we've done this production, and it is something very unique to the Conejo Valley. There is nothing else like this in this part of the country. I mean, you have to go east of the Mississippi to find this type of collaborative music production," she said.
Over 2,100 local students will perform the song when the Conejo Schools Foundation's All District Music Festival: Chorus event kicks off on Tuesday, April 28.
