Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute (WMI) will continue to offer extensive programming for children and adults through a variety of community programs, school-based work, family-friendly concerts, and programs for music professionals. During the 2010–2011 season, WMI will provide opportunities for people of all ages to create, experience, and enjoy the benefits of live music.
Following The Bernstein Mass Project, a highly successful collaboration in the 2008–2009 season, WMI will team up again in 2010–2011 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Marin Alsop for a creative learning project in which hundreds of New York City high school students will be invited to explore, rehearse, and perform Too Hot to Handel: The Gospel Messiah, a jazzy retooling of Handel’s choral work with R&B, jazz, and gospel styles. The Gospel Messiah Project will be made up of two separate initiatives: the performance project and the creative project. For the performance project, a large choir of approximately 200 students will learn The Gospel Messiah in their schools with their choral directors before joining the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Ms. Alsop for the final rehearsals and performance at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium/Perelman Stage. In the second project component, singers from five of the participating schools will also have the opportunity to work with composers to create their own choral anthems or arrangements, based on the themes explored in The Gospel Messiah, and will then perform these original works in a separate Zankel Hall concert.
The 2010-2011 season marks the 20th anniversary of the acclaimed Carnegie Hall Choral Workshop, first led in 1990 by the late Robert Shaw. Since then, the Carnegie Hall Choral Workshop has gathered choral professionals—conductors and singers—to prepare and perform great vocal masterworks at Carnegie Hall. Carnegie Hall will commemorate this anniversary in the new season’s Choral Workshop, with intensive preparation and a culminating performance of Berlioz’s Requiem. For the anniversary year, WMI will pair the Choral Workshop with its National High School Choral Festival program, bringing together the professionals of the Choral Workshop with high school choirs chosen by audition for the Choral Festival, for the final performance of Berlioz’s Requiem at Carnegie Hall. The chorus will be prepared by Norman Mackenzie, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s longtime chorus director who worked closely with Shaw, and the final concert will feature the Orchestra of St. Luke’s conducted by Robert Spano.
Other opportunities for professional musicians next season are presented through WMI’s series of Professional Training Workshops, which offer unique opportunities to explore great music with the leading artists of our time. In addition to the Choral Workshop, WMI will present four additional programs: a five-day Professional Training Workshop led by violinist Christian Tetzlaff, examining solo violin works of Bach, as well as violin and piano duos by Brahms and Schumann, and presented as part of Mr. Tetzlaff’s Perspectives series; a Workshop led by soprano Dawn Upshaw with composer Donnacha Dennehy for singers and composers in partnership with The Bard College Conservatory of Music; a series of master classes for pianists and jazz trios on improvisation and collaboration led by Brad Mehldau—holder of Carnegie Hall’s Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair; and The Song Continues…2011, a series of workshops dedicated to the art of the vocal recital, headed by mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne and featuring master classes led by Ms. Horne, Kurt Moll, and Malcolm Martineau and duo-recitals by program participants. This will mark the first year that the Weill Music Institute will present The Song Continues… under its own banner after many years of partnership with The Marilyn Horne Foundation. In 2009, it was announced that The Song Continues… and other core programs of the foundation would be incorporated into WMI’s programming with Ms. Horne serving as Artistic Advisor.
Of its over 50 free public community programs next season, WMI will present four free Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concerts as part of the citywide festival JapanNYC, including performances by Taiko drumming group Soh Daiko, shamisen duo Yutaka Oyama and Masahiro Nitta, and Line C3 Percussion Group. Also under WMI’s community programs banner is Musical Connections, now entering its second season, which provides free concerts and events in non-traditional venues such as correctional facilities, shelters, health care and elder-care facilities, bringing live music to people who would otherwise not have access to it on a regular basis. A specially selected roster of performing artists present a variety of concerts, workshops, and residencies, some focusing on collaborative music-making, with special attention paid to addressing the particular needs of these diverse audiences. WMI’s partnerships with non-traditional venues in New York City have flourished during the program’s first year and will expand next season.
Among its sequential, school-based programs for pre-K through high school, WMI continues its Carnegie Hall Cultural Exchange: Music of Mexico program for a second consecutive season. New York City high school students and their peers from Mexico City will collaborate and interact to explore each other’s music and culture. The program includes two concerts using videoconference technology to connect the students between Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall and a venue in Mexico City.
WMI has launched an online resource center for educators around the world that provides curriculum materials for its school-based programs and support materials for other WMI programs, as well as resources related to teaching artistry, professional development, and general music education. Online education resources can be found at carnegiehall.org/orc/index.html.
The Weill Music Institute creates broad-reaching music education and community programs that play a central role in Carnegie Hall’s commitment to making great music accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Woven into the fabric of the Carnegie Hall concert season, these programs occur at Carnegie Hall as well as in schools and throughout neighborhoods, providing musical opportunities for everyone, from preschoolers to adults, new listeners to emerging professionals. With access to the world’s greatest artists and latest technologies, the Weill Music Institute is uniquely positioned to inspire the next generation of music lovers, to nurture tomorrow’s musical talent, and to shape the evolution of musical learning itself. The Weill Music Institute’s school and community programs annually serve over 115,000 children, students, teachers, parents, young music professionals, and adults in the New York metropolitan area and across the US, as well as many people around the world through its online and distance learning initiatives.
