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The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall Announces 2008-09 Season
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Carnegie Hall News
Back to Press Release List > 09/19/2008 - The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall Announces 2008-09 Season
THE WEILL MUSIC INSTITUTE AT CARNEGIE HALL
ANNOUNCES PROGRAMMING FOR 2008–2009 SEASON
Major Education Projects for Public School Students Presented as Part of
Two Citywide Festivals Exploring America’s Rich Musical Heritage:
Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds in Fall 2008 and
Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy in Spring 2009
School-Based Programs Serving Over 50,000 K–12 Students Are Enhanced and Expanded
Carnegie Hall Goes Uptown: New Community Partnership Program Launches in Harlem
New Orchestral Repertoire Workshop for Young Musicians Draws Upon Expertise from
Artists of The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, New York Philharmonic,
and The Philadelphia Orchestra
Lemony Snicket and Nathaniel Stookey’s The Composer is Dead Highlights New Season of
Carnegie Hall Family Concerts Featuring Wide Variety of Music
New Teaching Artist Collaborative
Provides Training to Emerging and Practicing Teaching Artists
Find Out More on Weill Music Institute Programs:
Visit the Expanded Website at www.carnegiehall.org/exploreandlearn
Throughout the 2008–09 season, The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall will continue to build upon its mission of making great music accessible to as many people as possible, offering hundreds of educational programs for music lovers of all ages, including sustained work with students in school classrooms and workshop settings, professional development opportunities for teachers and musicians, and a variety of exciting and interactive performances at Carnegie Hall and neighborhood venues. The Weill Music Institute (WMI) annually reaches over 115,000 students, young professional musicians, adults, and families in New York City schools and communities, as well as people throughout the U.S. and around the world. Highlights of this season’s programs include major education projects for public school students in conjunction with two citywide Carnegie Hall festivals exploring America’s rich musical heritage; an expansion of WMI’s school-based programs for students in grades K–12; a new Community Partnership Program that launches in Harlem; an Orchestral Repertoire Workshop for Young Musicians led by leading musicians from three premier orchestras; a new season of Carnegie Hall Family Concerts including Lemony Snicket and Nathaniel Stookey’s The Composer is Dead among many other family-friendly events; and a new Teaching Artist Collaborative that will provide training and professional development for 24 emerging and practicing teaching artists.
“Through the work of The Weill Music Institute, Carnegie Hall seeks to ensure that people from all walks of life have the opportunity to engage with great music, exploring their creativity and deepest potential as performers or audience members,” said Clive Gillinson, Carnegie Hall’s Executive and Artistic Director. “With the integration of our artistic and educational resources, we are able to create compelling and varied programs, making connections with major programming initiatives like our Carnegie Hall festivals and collaborations with many of the world’s greatest artists. Through this work and our citywide partnerships, including significant work in New York City’s public schools, we are determined that Carnegie Hall should continue to play a central part in broadening the role and relevance of arts and culture in the lives of the children and adults of this great city and beyond.”
“Throughout the coming season, The Weill Music Institute looks forward to continuing the long-held tradition of welcoming families, concertgoers, and tens of thousands of students into the inspirational setting of Carnegie Hall,” said Sarah Johnson, Director of The Weill Music Institute. “Alongside Family Concerts, interactive performances for school audiences, and year-long music education classroom curriculums that will reach large numbers of New York students from Kindergarten through grade 12 in their classrooms this year, we will also initiate some distinct projects that offer select students more intense, in-depth learning experiences, including our Bernstein Mass Project for high school students this fall and seven Professional Training Workshops with leading visiting artists. Many of WMI’s programs have also once again been closely aligned with Carnegie Hall’s festivals this season, creating additional dimensions to Carnegie Hall’s season-long celebration of American music and the opportunity to venture further into New York’s neighborhoods with many special community partnerships.”
THE WEILL MUSIC INSTITUTE’S 2008–09 SEASON HIGHLIGHTS
(See below for a complete list of programs.)
WMI and Major Carnegie Hall Festivals
Carnegie Hall presents two citywide festivals this season, celebrating the extraordinary richness of American music: Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds in partnership with the New York Philharmonic from September 24 to December 13, 2008, and Honor! A Celebration of the African American Cultural Legacy curated by renowned soprano Jessye Norman from March 4 to 23, 2009. The Weill Music Institute will undertake major education projects in conjunction with both of these festivals, enhancing the festival experiences for students, teachers, and adults.
A key component of the Bernstein festival will be The Bernstein Mass Project, an expansive education program for New York City public school students that kicked off in spring 2008. For the project’s grand finale in the fall, participating students will come together for two programs: the first on October 19, when original student compositions inspired by Bernstein’s Mass will be performed in Zankel Hall, and the second on October 25, when a massive choir of approximately 500 New York City public school students will perform the Bernstein’s Mass with conductor Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at The United Palace Theater in Upper Manhattan. Similar in scope to last season’s acclaimed Rite of Spring Project presented in conjunction with Carnegie Hall’s Berlin in Lights festival, The Bernstein Mass Project will engage hundreds of New York City public school students as performers and composers, providing them with the unique opportunity both to create their own music and to perform with world-class musicians.
Other WMI programs presented during Carnegie Hall’s Bernstein festival include a Carnegie Hall Family Concert, The Bernstein Beat (November 1); Discovery Day: Leonard Bernstein, featuring panel discussions and multimedia presentations on the life of this legendary artist (November 15); and LinkUP! classroom curriculum for approximately 16,000 3rd to 5th grade students, which this year focuses on American music including favorites from Bernstein.
In conjunction with Honor!, The Weill Music Institute presents its annual Carnegie Hall National High School Choral Festival, in which four high school choirs from across the country, selected by audition, work with conductor Craig Jessop on a choral masterwork and perform it in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. This season, Sir Michael Tippett’s 1941 oratorio A Child of Our Time has been selected for preparation by the choirs for a final performance at Carnegie Hall on March 20, as well as two additional performances of excerpts at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, during the Honor! festival. One of the most deeply moving and spiritually uplifting contemporary choral works of the 20th century, A Child of Our Time utilizes the African American Spiritual in much the same way that Bach employed chorales in his great choral compositions.
Additional WMI activities during Honor! will include a series of Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concerts and a specially created yearlong curriculum that focuses on the meaningful connections between the tradition of African American song forms and U.S. history for its Perelman American Roots program for middle school music and social studies students.
WMI Expands Offerings for Grades K–12
This season, The Weill Music Institute further develops and expands its school-based programs that annually serve over 50,000 New York City and area K–12 students. Focusing on providing sequential learning opportunities for students, WMI has enhanced its elementary school programs in order to create a consistent thread of music education that provides an appropriate transition from each grade level to the next. The McGraw-Hill Companies CarnegieKids for Pre–K and Kindergarten students will focus on creating music in participatory concerts led by engaging, imaginative host-musicians. Musical Explorers for grades 1–2 will focus on the voice and singing through interactive curriculum and concerts entitled “My City, My Song,” which explores the musical traditions of the various cultural communities that make up New York City. The 24th year of WMI’s acclaimed LinkUP! program for grades 3–5 also takes on a geographic focus this season with curriculum and concerts entitled “America: My Country, My Music,” examining American music through the spirit, ideals, and history of its people.
Citi Global Encounters for high school social studies, English, and music students will expand this season to encompass two tracks of study—the music of Turkey and of India—from which participating teachers may select. In a new enhancement to the program, teachers may select from varying levels of participation in the program, with options including in-class teaching-artist visits and an integrated Cultural Exchange component that provides students with opportunities to communicate with their Indian or Turkish peers through an online exchange community sponsored by Sony Corporation, as well as two video-conferenced concerts that utilize Zankel Hall’s distance-learning technology to connect students, teachers, and musicians overseas in real-time. Using the online community, classes participating in the Cultural Exchange component experience a yearlong curriculum that offers students opportunities to learn about and share their own music with their counterparts. For those classrooms focusing on Turkey, students will study the relationship between structure and freedom in Turkish and American music and their own lives. They will explore these ideas through musical use of ornamentation, improvisation, and musical accompaniment in the Gypsy music of clarinetist Selim Sesler and the jazz compositions of Maurice Brown. Similarly, the students studying India will explore the relationship between freedom and structure in music, featuring performances by Indian tabla master and Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist Zakir Hussain and jazz trombonist Robin Eubanks.
Carnegie Hall Heads Uptown to Harlem for Pilot of New Community Partnership Program
With its free Neighborhood Concert Series and school-based programs that reach all five boroughs, The Weill Music Institute actively engages with many different communities throughout New York City. This season, WMI reinforces this commitment by launching a new Community Partnership Program that commences its first pilot season with programs in Harlem. The Weill Music Institute—with its access to Carnegie Hall’s roster of renowned artists—will partner with Harlem community cultural organizations, including the Apollo Theater, Harlem Stage, and The Schomburg Center, with the goal of celebrating a community’s musical life and bringing people together in new ways through dialogue and public events.
Among this program’s activities, The Weill Music Institute and its partners will produce Community Sing events, in which major artists and Harlem residents can come together for a night of group singing. Professionals, amateurs, and those with no experience are all welcome to join together. Community Sing events will be held with the Soweto Gospel Choir on November 18 at the Harlem Stage Gatehouse, with youth performers in conjunction with Carnegie Hall’s Honor! festival in March at the Apollo Theater (exact date to be announced), and with the Fisk Jubilee Singers on May 23 at The Schomburg Center. Additional details about Community Partnership Program events in Harlem will be announced at a later date.
New Professional Training Workshop for Young Musicians on Orchestral Repertoire
This season, in collaboration with leading wind and brass musicians from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Weill Music Institute introduces a new Professional Training Workshop for young wind and brass musicians, focusing on orchestral repertoire. Workshop leaders from these three premier orchestras will guide the young artists through the process of auditioning for professional orchestra positions, and will share their insights about life as professional orchestra musicians, including their rehearsal and performance techniques. Participants chosen by audition will take one-on-one lessons with the professional musicians, rehearse in wind and brass sectionals, and perform in mock auditions open to the public on November 11 and 12. The young musicians will also be given the opportunity to attend performances by all three orchestras. This new program is one of seven Professional Training Workshops for young musicians presented by The Weill Music Institute during the 2008–09 season.
Lemony Snicket’s The Composer is Dead Comes to Carnegie Hall
As part of Carnegie Hall’s series of Family Concerts, The Weill Music Institute presents The Composer is Dead on March 7, with live narration by best-selling children’s author Lemony Snicket. This riotous collaboration between Mr. Snicket and the composer Nathaniel Stookey engages the audience in a gripping murder mystery that makes every member of the orchestra a suspect. The Composer is Dead will be published as a book with accompanying CD in early 2009 by HarperCollins. Six additional Carnegie Hall Family Concerts, all priced at $9 and featuring a wide variety of music, will be presented during the 2008–09 season.
New Teaching Artist Collaborative Provides Opportunities for Professional Development
The Teaching Artist Collaborative, a new program added this season, supports 24 practicing and emerging teaching artists in a yearlong program that provides opportunities for practicing artists and teachers to work collaboratively in educational settings, offering practical tools, explored in workshop settings, and applying what is learned in real classroom experiences. Three focus areas of the program are working with students in skills-based settings; teaching music through integrated learning in social studies, global studies, and English classrooms; and helping students to develop their own music or creative responses to music through creative learning projects. Teaching artists will be able to use acquired experiences, philosophies, relationships, and ideas to more effectively serve students and communities in New York City. Participants may also be offered further employment opportunities in other WMI programs.
PROGRAMS OF THE WEILL MUSIC INSTITUTE AT CARNEGIE HALL
SCHOOL PROGRAMS
The McGraw-Hill Companies CarnegieKids (for Pre–K to Kindergarten)
The McGraw-Hill Companies CarnegieKids program introduces children to the joys of creating music, led by imaginative host-musicians. During these 45-minute concerts, children sing and create music together while experiencing a variety of inventive instruments.
The McGraw-Hill Companies is proud to sponsor CarnegieKids.
CarnegieKids is supported, in part, by a generous endowment gift from Linda and Earle S. Altman.
Musical Explorers (for grades 1–2)
This season’s theme, My City, My Song, will focus on the diverse cultures and music of New York City through a yearlong curriculum. Using an instrument we are all born with, our voice, Musical Explorers will take students on a journey through the wonderful sounds of New York City. The program includes professional development workshops for teachers and two concerts. Featured artists for the fall concert include Gregory Rahming (classical, gospel), Falu (Indian music), and Anne-Marie Hildebrandt (Irish music).
Musical Explorers is sponsored by Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP.
Musical Explorers is supported, in part, by the Marma Foundation Fund for Youth Education.
LinkUP! (for grades 3–5)
The theme for the 24th season of LinkUP! is America: My Country, My Music. Students will be studying American music in conjunction with Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds festival. LinkUP! unites the classroom with the concert hall, allowing students to sing, play the recorder or a string instrument, and study music in the classroom through creative work and reflective activities. The interactive final concerts in May for students will feature the Orchestra of St. Luke’s led by conductor John Morris Russell.
LinkUP! is funded, in part, by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
LinkUP! is made possible through the generous annual support of The Marie Baier Foundation, Wachovia, The Rose M. Badgeley Residuary Charitable Trust, The Seth Sprague Educational and Charitable Foundation, and The Barker Welfare Foundation.
Perelman American Roots (for grades 6–8)
In conjunction with the Honor! festival, this season’s Perelman American Roots curriculum for middle school social studies and choral students has been specifically designed to focus on the meaningful connections between the traditions of African American song forms and U.S. history. This year, the program has expanded to include two concerts. The first, on March 20, will feature a performance by the participants in the annual National High School Choral Festival (see below) at the Apollo Theater, and the second, on May 22, will feature the Fisk Jubilee Singers from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.
This program is made possible, in part, by the Ronald O. Perelman Music Endowment Fund.
Citi Global Encounters (for grades 9–12)
This program for high school social studies, English, and music students utilizes world music to provide insight into the culture and history of a chosen country or region. This year, Citi Global Encounters will expand to encompass two tracks of study—the music of Turkey and of India—which participating teachers may choose between. See the highlights section above for complete details.
Citi Foundation is the lead sponsor of Citi Global Encounters.
Communities LinkUP!
WMI partners with local professional, community, and university orchestras, offering Communities LinkUP! programming across the United States. WMI provides supporting materials, resources, and professional development for site administrators to implement LinkUP! curriculum in their own communities. Regional partner sites for 2008–09 include:
• Duquesne University; Pittsburgh, PA
• Carnegie Hall West Virginia; Lewisburg, WV
• West Shore Symphony Orchestra; Muskegon, MI
• Omaha Symphony; Omaha, NE
• Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra; Fort Worth, TX
• Honolulu Symphony; Honolulu, HI
• Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra; Baton Rouge, LA
• University of Southern Mississippi; Hattiesburg, MS
• Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra; Saint Louis, MO
National High School Choral Festival
In conjunction with the Honor! festival, The Weill Music Institute presents its annual Carnegie Hall National High School Choral Festival, in which four high school choirs from across the country, selected by audition, work with choral conductor Craig Jessop to perfect a choral masterwork for a final performance in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage. This season, the four choirs will learn and perform Sir Michael Tippett’s 1941 oratorio A Child of Our Time with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s at Carnegie Hall on March 20, as well as perform excerpts of the work in two additional performances at the Apollo Theater: on March 20 for middle school students in WMI’s Perelman American Roots program and on March 22 for the Honor! concert A Celebration of the Spiritual and Gospel Music.
The Carnegie Hall National High School Choral Festival is made possible, in part, by an endowment fund for choral music established by S. Donald Sussman in memory of Judith Arron and Robert Shaw.
COMMUNITY AND FAMILY PROGRAMS
Carnegie Hall Family Concerts (Recommended for ages 5–12)
Encouraging families to explore music together, WMI offers a variety of interactive and affordable Carnegie Hall Family Concerts recommended for ages 5–12. Concerts, with all tickets priced at $9, take place in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage and Zankel Hall. Featuring a wide range of classical, jazz, and world music performers, the concerts also include a fun and informative pre-concert activity.
This season’s Family Concerts include:
• The Bernstein Beat on Saturday, November 1 at 2:00 p.m. in Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage
• Soweto Gospel Choir on Sunday, November 16 at 1:00 p.m. in Zankel Hall
• Kronos Quartet on Saturday, December 6 at 1:00 p.m. in Zankel Hall
• Slavic Soul Party! on Sunday, February 8 at 1:00 p.m. in Zankel Hall
• Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra on Saturday, February 14 at 1:00 p.m. in Zankel Hall
• Lemony Snicket and Nathaniel Stookey’s The Composer is Dead on Saturday, March 7
at 2:00 p.m. in Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage
• Ensemble ACJW on Sunday, March 29 at 1:00 p.m. in Zankel Hall
Carnegie Hall Family Concerts are made possible, in part, by generous endowment gifts from Mr. and Mrs. Lester S. Morse Jr., and the Henry and Lucy Moses Fund.
Neighborhood Concerts
This season, the Neighborhood Concert Series will present 45 free concerts for New Yorkers of all ages in collaboration with community and cultural centers throughout the city’s five boroughs. For 33 years, this series has embraced its commitment to offering New York City residents a wide variety of music, including classical, jazz, bluegrass, African, Latin, and much more! Highlights this fall include Ben Allison and Man Size Safe on Sunday, November 16 at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, the Soweto Gospel Choir on Wednesday, November 19 at Harlem Stage/Aaron Davis Hall, Alexander Fiterstein and Friends on Sunday, December 14 at the Brooklyn Central Library, Falu on Sunday, January 4 at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, and the Miró Quartet on Saturday, January 24 at the Queens Museum of Art. For a complete schedule throughout the season, please visit www.carnegiehall.org/neighborhoodconcerts.
Generously supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and by the New York State Council on the Arts.
Additional support is provided by The Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation.
PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMS
Professional Training Workshops
Designed for young pre-professional and professional musicians between the ages of 18 to 35, the Professional Training Workshops of The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall provide a unique opportunity to explore rehearsal and performance techniques with the leading artists of our time. During the 2008–09 season, WMI presents seven workshops, which include master classes and sessions of intensive performance preparation led by master artists of many different styles and genres. The workshops are tuition-free for participants, who are chosen by audition, open to observation by auditors, and many culminate in public performances by the young musicians.
Professional Training Workshops are made possible, in part, by Mr. and Mrs. Nicola Bulgari and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.
This season’s workshops are:
• Osvaldo Golijov and Dawn Upshaw Workshop: Composing Song (October 2–8, 2008, and May 3–10, 2009)—This two-part workshop, in partnership with The Bard College Conservatory of Music, commissions eight young composers to write new solo or duo vocal works for the 18 young singers chosen to participate. These composers and vocalists, working with Golijov and Upshaw, will workshop their compositions at Bard in October and rehearse and premiere their works in May at Carnegie Hall.
• Orchestral Repertoire Workshop: Winds and Brass (November 9–14, 2008)—See highlights section above for workshop description.
• Claude and Pamela Frank Workshop: Finding the Voice in Beethoven and Schubert (December 7–14, 2008)—Father and daughter team, Claude and Pamela Frank, will explore the violin sonatas and piano trios of Beethoven and Schubert. This workshop will discuss the instrumental and vocal writing of Beethoven and Schubert’s works by including vocal coaching sessions with a renowned vocalist to examine how instrumental music can breathe and sing like the human voice. Participants will also attend two public master classes on December 10 and 11 and two final concerts in Weill Recital Hall on December 13 and 14. Specific attention will be paid to Beethoven’s Piano Trio Op. 1, No. 2, and Piano and Violin Sonata Op. 96.
• The Song Continues… (January 20& |
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