orchestra21

This weekend the WCFSO Lollipops – our traveling, free concert series for toddlers and kids – celebrates thirty years of continuous performances. We’re marking the occassion with a special performance and all-day installation of our instrument petting zoo at the Waterloo Center for the Arts.

One of my deepest professional passions is bringing music to life for young people, so it has been a great honor and pleasure to provide Iowa kids with their earliest experiences of live music through my involvement in this invaluable community program. Now the feeling is personal as well: On Saturday my eighteen-month-old son Benjamin will be among the throng of excited kids helping the WCFSO kick off our next three decades of Lollipops.

[Image from a WCFSO performance for youth by Noah Henschied]

Great news for the WCFSO – we just received word of five-figure grants from the Community Foundation of Northeast Iowa and the Guernsey Charitable Foundation in support of our youth concerts, family programming and Buck-a-Kid outreach effort. Both grants are up significantly over previous years, proof that prioritizing our role as an educational resource for our community can pay dividends even in an uncertain economic climate. A huge thank you to both foundations for helping us pursue our ongoing goal of offering our very best work to young audiences across northern Iowa.

Takemitsu – Requiem
Carl St. Clair & the Pacific Symphony

In memory of the many thousands who perished this week in Japan.

Follow news related to the situation at Tumblr’s curated Japan page and while you’re there consider making a donation to assist in the recovery effort. The American Red Cross is another good option for aid – give $10 by texting REDCROSS to 90999.

I’ve said it before and will say it again: despite all the hype surrounding LA Phil music director Gustavo Dudamel the orchestra’s tremendous success has much more to do with his predecessor Esa-Pekka Salonen. Here’s why:

‘Coming out of Europe, from very Boulezian circles—with all due respect, of course—and coming to LA with this somewhat arrogant Eurocentric idea that, ‘Okay, I’m from Europe, I’m going to show you guys what culture is and what we should be thinking.’ To my credit, I got quite quickly this is not the way to deal with this situation. Better to actually try to learn the identity of the local culture and how a symphony orchestra as an institution could have this unique identity of a Southern California arts organization as opposed to trying to plug in the Vienna Philharmonic clone somewhere in the San Fernando Valley. I luckily saw the light quite quickly.’

‘My first daughter was very little, so we started a new family life in a new country and on a new continent. She went to school there, and you get to know people in a completely different way as opposed to being a conductor who jets in and stays in a swanky hotel like this and flies out after the last show.’

When all music directors and orchestras come around to this point of view we’ll have many more success stories to tell.

[From an interview at Newcity Music, via NobleViola]

Each season I try to create at least one orchestra program that fosters connections across racial and cultural lines – here is one recent example. Scrollworks, a visionary music education project in Birmingham, Alabama, dedicates itself entirely to that effort. Learn more about Jeane Goforth and her students at NPR.