URBANA – Urbana students got down to Mozart on Wednesday morning.

They shook their shoulders to Duke Ellington, nodded their heads in time to a Cuban conga.

Packed in to the Prairie Elementary School gym, the students got a preview of the Harlem quartet, a nationally known string quartet playing with the Sphinx Chamber Orchestra at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts tonight at 7:30.

"They're going to Carnegie Hall and Harris Theater and also Prairie School," said Prairie music teacher James Lyons gleefully as he waited for the quartet to arrive on Wednesday morning. "I want these kids to know that our school here is special enough that we can have great music."

Lyons said he first heard of the Detroit- and New York-based Sphinx Organization at a music educators conference in Italy this past summer.

When Lyons found out the quartet – part of the Sphinx – would be touring, he contacted its main office and asked if the group could make a detour on its way to Krannert. "My dream is to have the music resounding through the halls of Prairie School," he said.

Good for him that "pretty much every stop (on the tour), we try to go into the community," said Melissa White, a violinist in the quartet.

Sphinx Organization has a mission to promote diversity within classical music – both the audiences who listen to it and the musicians who play it, White said. She likes performing "for the kids, to make them excited about music," she said. "Classical music is amazing, and we really want to share it."

The students seemed to appreciate the favor. As the quartet played some jazzy music, little waves of motion rippled around the gym, as hundreds of students managed to dance while staying cross-legged in place.

Between songs, students name instruments and listen to each play individually, learning that violins can make higher notes than violas, and that cellos can hit lower notes than both.

They learn how music provokes emotion when the quartet plays a happy can-can and then a lullaby, with quartet members pretending to fall asleep as the students quietly giggled.

Fifth grader Brianna Torrance found purpose by watching the Harlem Quartet. She has been playing violin for two months – much less than Harlem cello player Desmond Neysmith.

"When he said he played 28 years, I wanted to keep going," Torrance said. "When (violinist Ilmar Gavilan) hit the high notes, it was kind of cool. I wish that I played high notes."

She said she would start practicing – right after school.