April 12, 2005
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Portland, Ore. … Community leaders playing toy instruments and students performing side-by-side with Oregon Symphony musicians will highlight a Symphony concert to celebrate a two-year Community Music Partnership (CMP) with the North Bend School District 13 and the Oregon Coast Music Association on Friday, May 6 at 7:30 p.m. in the North Bend High School gymnasium. CMP funding is provided by the Ford Family Foundation, the JELD-WEN Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Oregon Cultural Trust, the Oregon Arts Commission, the Cow Creek Umpqua Indian Foundation and Pacificorp Foundation for Learning.
High school and community musicians from throughout Coos County will join the Symphony for a performance of Aaron Copland’s “Billy the Kid” Suite; dancers from the North Bend High School dance program will perform with orchestra to Felix Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and the chair of the North Bend school board accompanied by several school principals, teachers and community volunteers will play miniature pianos, bicycle horns and other toy instruments for Colin Matthews’ Machines and Dreams: A Toy Symphony. The toy soloists are all members of a local steering committee that has worked with the Symphony to plan and coordinate partnership activities. The program also includes Richard Wagner’s Overture to the Flying Dutchman and Richard Strauss’ Don Juan. The program will be conducted by Jean-Marie Zeitouni, a rising young French Canadian conductor.
While in North Bend, the Symphony also will present two free youth concerts for Coos County school children. The Youth Concerts are scheduled for 9 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, May 5, also in the North Bend High School Gymnasium. Mei-Ann Chen, the Symphony’s Assistant Conductor, will conduct the youth concerts, which will feature a musical program called “Storm Chasers.” Select student groups will perform original, weather-inspired compositions as part of the concerts.
The North Bend Symphony concerts are among the more than 300 activities to take place in Coos County since January through the CMP, the Symphony’s most significant community engagement initiative. Activities have included school-based instrument “petting zoos,” ensemble performances, master classes and other student events, in addition to monthly chamber music concerts for the community. Groups of Symphony musicians and staff have visited Coos County at least monthly to present activities.
“The early impact of the partnership has surprised us all. We knew there would be great benefit to local music programs, and the children served by those programs. But the impact has turned out to be so much broader,” said steering committee member Jeff McKeown, also President of the Coos Bay City Council. “Our goal is to sustain our partnership with the Oregon Symphony and to continue to build music programs and offerings long into the future.”
The CMP goal is to have a lasting impact on music education in Oregon’s rural communities, said Michael Kosmala, the Symphony’s Vice President of Education and Community Programs. The three-year-old program was developed after an extensive review of education and touring activities, he said. Previous partnerships have been with the Klamath Falls and Redmond communities.
“The Symphony’s role is to act as a catalyst, connecting Symphony resources with the community’s existing goals for arts education in its schools,” he said. To facilitate this, the Symphony began working with the North Bend Steering Committee in the summer of 2004 to identify goals and provide resources, both financial and human, in the initial planning.
The second year of the partnership will focus on the development of a sustainability plan to further develop Coos County music programs through local resources and collaborations, as well as to explore creativity sources of additional funding. The Symphony also will offer staff development classes, specifically a course taught by Kosmala and arts consultant Annie Painter called “Music Is, Music Feels, Music Speaks.” The course is designed to provide music specialists and general teachers at both elementary and secondary levels with leadership skills in music-related activities, and to promote the sustainability of an arts curriculum in Coos County schools after the Community Music Partnership concludes in June 2006.
Tickets for the May 6 Symphony concert are $5 per person or $10 per family (parents with minor children) and may be purchased through the Oregon Coast Music Association office at 235 Anderson in Coos Bay (southeast corner, 2 nd floor of the Coos Art Museum). The OCMA box office is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m.; tickets may also be ordered by phone at (541) 267-0938 or (877) 897-9350 or online at orders@oregoncoastmusic.com, or at the following ticket outlets: Jennies; Books by the Bay; Huggins Insurance; Young’s Southbound Sound and Music; and House of Myrtlewood/ Oregon Connection.
