[Dixielandjazz] Bringing the music to the people.

[Steve Barbone]

What a kick it is to see some musical activists trying to do something about
popularizing classical music in the USA. Now if we jazz heads could only get
together with Lincoln Center and do likewise.

We could use more promotion of Mighty Aphrodite, Jonathan Russell, Brett
Boyd and all the other young people who are outstanding OKOMers, etc.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


Trying to Appeal to Youth With One of Their Own
NY TIMES - By BERNARD HOLLAND - November 27, 2006

Rear orchestra-section seats at Avery Fisher Hall on Friday night were awash
with young people, presumably invited by a New York Philharmonic interested
in updating its audience. For those willing to put Ludacris or My Chemical
Romance aside for an evening and give classical music a chance, there were a
number of apparent come-ons at work.

Joyce Yang, an enterprising competition warrior scarcely out of her teens,
was there as role model, playing that whiz-bang favorite of all
career-hungry young pianists: Rachmaninoff¹s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
(remainder snipped for brevity)


AND THIS ONE - ALSO SEE PARAGRAPH 4 BELOW. LONG OVERDUE AS MANY TOP LEVEL
CLASSICAL (and jazz) MUSICIANS ARE VIRTUALLY IGNORANT OF WHAT IS GOING ON IN
THE WORLD AROUND THEM and/or HOW TO MAKE A LIVING IN THE REAL WORLD OF
MUSIC. IN THAT REGARD CHECK OUT THE LAST 5 PARAGRAPHS.

New Project to Send Musicians Into Schools
NY TIMES - By DANIEL J. WAKIN - November 28, 2006

Two pillars of the classical musical establishment, Carnegie Hall and the
Juilliard School, have joined forces to give birth to a music academy whose
fellows will go forth and propagate musicianship in New York public schools.

The city¹s Education Department is opening its arms to the new program,
seeing an inexpensive but valuable source of teaching for a system deprived
of comprehensive music training. And the leaders of Carnegie and Juilliard
see an opportunity to promote their conviction that a musician in
21st-century America should be more than just a person who plays the notes.

Under the new program elite musicians will receive high-level musical
training, performance opportunities at Carnegie Hall and guidance from city
school teachers in how to teach music. The fellows will each be assigned to
a different school and work there one and a half days a week. They will
teach their instruments, or music in general, and give their own pointers to
school music teachers.

The idea is to cultivate musicians with a wider view of the world, who will
populate professional orchestras and help turn them into cultural forces in
their cities. Such thinking has become increasingly prevalent in musical
institutions, which worry that classical music has been pushed to the
margins of society.

³It¹s essentially about how you nurture and train the finest young
musicians,² said Clive Gillinson, Carnegie¹s executive and artistic
director. The idea, said Joseph W. Polisi, Juilliard¹s president, is to
³change the paradigm² of being a musician and help players make music ³that
is at the center of society and the life of the individual.² Joel I. Klein,
the city¹s schools chancellor, who has a fourth-grade clarinet education,
said, ³Here you are really talking about first-class musicians who will be
working with our teachers and kids.²

The school system is contributing almost $200,000 to the first phase of the
operation, which lasts from January through June. ³The Department of
Education is effectively buying services,² Mr. Polisi said.

The total yearly budget is expected to reach $5 million eventually, the
organizers said. Carnegie and Juilliard have been raising funds from private
donors for most of the costs and have received $2 million in pledges so far.
When asked whether he would seek funds from Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg¹s
philanthropy, Mr. Gillinson said, ³We¹ll be approaching everybody.²

The program is starting modestly, with 16 fellows. But by the third year the
organizers hope to have about 50, each receiving a $24,000 stipend, health
benefits, practice space, access to Juilliard¹s library and performance
opportunities at Carnegie Hall and Juilliard, either in chamber groups or in
solo recitals. The fellowship will last two years. The musicians will use
space at Juilliard, and the administration will be housed at Carnegie. The
manager of Carnegie¹s professional training workshops, Amy Rhodes, will
serve as director.

The musicians are expected to spend 20 hours a week on fellowship
activities, which include receiving free lessons and coaching and
participating in master classes. Education department officials will provide
training. In return a brass-playing fellow, for example, may work with a
school band leader who is expert only in woodwinds.

The organizers hope the program will be seen as a template. Formally it is
called the Academy: a Program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School and the
Weill Music Institute (Weill being the educational arm of Carnegie).
Informally the program is called the Fellowship.

The effort is the first big project initiated by Mr. Gillinson at Carnegie
Hall. He took over the hall ‹ which has grown into a mini-empire of concert
curators, educational workshops and music teaching ‹ in July 2005, having
played in and managed the London Symphony Orchestra, where he also
established educational programs.

Mr. Gillinson said that when he arrived in the United States, he was struck
by the huge number of conservatory graduates and the tiny number of
orchestra jobs, by what he called an ³undersupply² of advanced music
teaching in the city¹s schools and by the lack of a resident ensemble at
Carnegie. And he took note of Juilliard nine streets north.

³It seemed absolutely natural to me to do something in partnership,² he
said. He invited Mr. Polisi to lunch in October 2005 to discuss the idea.
³We realized we were in the same place,² Mr. Polisi said. They worked out a
plan and last spring approached Mr. Klein, who has embraced such
partnerships between the city and outside institutions.

Mr. Klein said that music classes had been severely depleted after the
city¹s fiscal crisis in the 1970s. Under his direction the Education
Department has set up a comprehensive plan for teaching music, visual arts,
dance and theater. Now some 978 full-time music teachers work in a school
system of 1.1 million students. An incomplete survey found that 82 percent
of New York City public schools have music teachers.

At its full strength the Academy will directly serve 14,000 students a year,
said Sharon Dunn, the school system¹s senior manager for arts education.

Bringing in outside help was a more efficient use of money than simply
hiring more teachers, she said. Ms. Dunn added that even if the system had
enough money to hire a music teacher for every school, there would not be
enough teachers available.

Juilliard students already work with the city schools, but on a limited
basis. Past efforts to broaden involvement ³never really panned out,² Mr.
Polisi said.

The first academy fellows were handpicked from Juilliard alumni and
Carnegie¹s professional training workshops. Future fellows will be picked
through auditions, interviews and answers to essay questions.

The current batch includes the components of a woodwind quintet and a string
quartet, a trumpeter, a trombonist, a double bassist, two pianists and two
percussionists: a mix-and-match lineup for chamber and contemporary
performances.

The biographies of the fellows show common threads. Most have master¹s
degrees and significant performance experience, particularly in chamber
music. Several have founded groups or local concert series. Over all they
tend to be veterans of the summer festival circuit and list associations
with prominent musicians like Yo-Yo Ma and James Levine. Many have a bent
for new music. Some already have experience teaching in music schools.

³It kind of covered all aspects of what I felt a performer should ideally be
doing with their music,² said Elizabeth Janzen, 27, a flutist and fellow
from Newfoundland. ³It also allows me to go out and help in the public
schools and hone my teaching skills. I¹m a real advocate of the renaissance
musician.²

Nadia Sirota, a 23-year-old violist who lives in New York, said the plan
appealed to her definition of musician as entrepreneur. Such musicians
should be comfortable playing in unusual settings like bars and galleries,
she said. They should be able to initiate their own recording projects or
concert series and should be open to contemporary music that appeals to all.

³We¹re trying to peddle our wares to the general public rather than a tiny
subset of the classical music audience,² she said.

Ms. Sirota said she grew up in a generation used to hearing that classical
music was dying. ³If you grow up hearing that, you¹re going to try to fix
it,² she said. ³That¹s an advantage this generation has.²

Ms. Sirota added that she looked forward to meeting other entrepreneurial
colleagues.

³The biggest thing, honestly, is health insurance,² she said, laughing.
³When you get out of school, you realize your entire safety net is pulled
out from under you.²