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Community Outreach
& Education 2004-2005
Music is a powerful motivator. It fosters a sense of self-worth, promotes
positive values and creates opportunity. Music reaches through barriers.
Ravinia Festival's outreach and education efforts provide relevant programs in
schools, communities and at the Festival. We educate, expand cultural options,
and encourage involvement from audiences who would not otherwise experience the
infinite variety of music offered at Ravinia.
IN THE SCHOOLS
Through its numerous community outreach and education initiatives, Ravinia
Festival continues to demonstrate an unparalleled commitment to education
through significant contributions to teaching and learning. Through school
residencies, Ravinia provides music sessions that enhance the core curriculum
in three distinct grade levels in 22 of Chicago’s Public Schools.
·
Music Discovery Program for students in kindergarten
through third grade
·
Music Illumination for students in grades 4-6
·
Music Performance Program for high school students
Through the Music Discovery and Illumination Programs,
teachers from 12 elementary schools and Ravinia artists collaborate to create
arts-integrated projects for the classroom. Artists then participate in 15-week
residencies with each participating classroom.
Students learn through activities that connect music with
science, literature and social studies. The teaching artists and teachers
encourage students to use their feelings, hopes and dreams as a source of
inspiration for their compositions and performances.
Through the Music Performance Program, 10 participatory high
schools work with jazz and classical mentors. This instruction tends to be
one-on-one or in small groups. Each spring a select group of students is chosen
as Jazz Scholars, affording them to special training and the opportunity to
perform at Ravinia. The schools, families and communities are treated to a
culminating student presentation. “Return to Ravinia” passes are provided to
students and their families.
Through the help of the Festival's Women's Board, volunteers
read the story of Prokofiev's Peter and
the Wolf to all 2nd and 3rd graders at partner schools in the Classical
Connections Program. After a reading of the story in the classroom, students
congregate in their school auditorium for a live performance and narration of
the work by the Barrosa Wind Quintet.
New to this year’s programs is BandQuest, a collaboration
between the Ravinia Festival, the American Composer's Forum and the Chicago
Sinfonietta. BandQuest is a collection of newly commissioned works by
contemporary American composers for middle school and high school bands.
Professional musicians work closely with band directors and students to prepare
a selected composition through the use of mentoring, master classes and the use
of a unique CD-ROM learning tool designed by the American Composer's Forum.
IN THE COMMUNITY
Ravinia is active in Chicago’s under-served communities, particularly Lawndale.
The Ravinia Festival Lawndale Partnership helps community
leaders and residents reinvest in the cultural health of their community
through arts planning meetings, classes and concerts. The Community Music
Conservatory offers free group and private lessons to more than 120 students in
piano, violin, classical guitar, voice and music theory. The Partnership’s
Community Concert Program, coordinated jointly by Ravinia and community
leaders, brings family-oriented performances by diverse musical artists to area
venues.
Stressing the importance of access, Ravinia worked with over
500 organizations in Chicago’s under-served communities to distribute free lawn
passes to concerts at Ravinia through the Opportunity Lawn Pass Program.
Through the Words and Music program, Ravinia distributes
25,000 free lawn passes to Chicagoland library systems, which in turn
distribute them to patrons.
The Classical Invitations initiative provides complimentary
pavilion tickets for classical concerts to students at Chicagoland music
schools. Schools are given tickets to their choice of three concerts and are
also given return-to-Ravinia family lawn passes.
AT RAVINIA
Ravinia's Perspectives on Music is a series of public pre-concert artist
interviews by Ravinia President and CEO Welz Kauffman. These discussions are
presented in Bennett-Gordon Hall, the Martin Theatre, and occasionally in the
Santa Fe tent, 45 minutes before various Chicago Symphony Orchestra concerts
and other selected programs. Among this year's interviewees are pianists
Jeffrey Kahane and Tzimon Barto, conductor James Conlon, composer Stephen
Sondheim, acclaimed ballerina and Balanchine protege Maria Tallchief, and
Alexandre Rachmaninoff, the grandson of the great composer.