By Leslie Tuomi | Development Director
While Chamber Music Northwest is best known for its annual Summer Festival, many people may not know that CMNW is active year-round, taking music out of the concert hall and into the community. In fact, last year, 6,783 people participated in our Education and Community Engagement programs, which are offered throughout the Portland metropolitan area.
Rather than expect our audiences to come to us, we take our programs to accessible spaces where we share music with all types of audiences. For outdoor concerts, we often utilize the fabulous SoundsTruck Northwest, a portable stage that can be parked almost anywhere, which provides a stage and acoustical environment comparable to a fine concert hall! We also do informal pop-up concerts in public spaces such as food carts, farmer’s markets, and town squares, as well as in hospitals, assisted living centers, bookstores, and social service programs that serve people experiencing homelessness, medical issues and other concerns.
We work with schools and our community partners to create programs that are meaningful and relevant for their audiences. When working with a school, we are often able to tie our music program into their curriculum, discussing the context for the pieces that are performed, and their connection to today.
This spring, PHAME, a school for the arts that brings together people with and without disabilities, helped us create our first-ever Sensory Friendly Performance. The wind quintet, “WindSync” structured the Sensory Friendly Performance into distinct segments: Concert Time, Story Time, Conducting Time, and Clapping Time. Young people learn how the instruments produce sound through an old-fashioned Texas hoedown, and they apply musical terms to dance through selections from a well-loved classical repertoire. The audience performs, too, clapping rhythmic patterns in a rousing finale. Their interactive version of “Peter and the Wolf” was a real crowd-pleaser.
We started our 2023-24 season with violinist Anna Lee, a former CMNW Protégé Project artist, who worked the Junior Orchestra of Yamhill County (JOY) in Newberg, the Rose Villa Senior Living Community, Metropolitan Youth Symphony, and offered a masterclass at the Community Music Center. Our Artists-in-Residence, the Catalyst Quartet, concluded their residency working with Hillsboro School District (offering programs in Spanish and English), Portland Youth Philharmonic and Portland State University.
The Goldmund Quartet, in their first visit from Germany, performed for full houses in both their evening concert, and at Floyd Light Middle School. This spring, in addition to WindSync, we also had the Grammy-award winning Imani Winds in town for our collaboration with BodyVox, and they were able to work with the Grant High School instrumental programs and fundraiser for education programs at the new ParkView retirement center, as well as Thursdays@3 at All Classical Radio into their very busy schedule.
We conclude the school year with a residency by the Lyon-Sasaki Duo. For the past three years, pianist Mika Sasaki has spent months communicating with eight varied partner agencies and visiting for a week each year, first with violinist Becky Anderson, and this year with cellist Mitch Lyon. This year’s partners included Blanchet House, BRAVO Youth Orchestra, Junior Orchestras of Yamhill County (JOY), p:ear, PHAME, Raphael House of Portland, and Westmoreland’s Union Manor.
And the summer brings even more events, including Prelude and pop-up concerts, open rehearsals, masterclasses and more! Over a twelve-month period, CMNW offered a total of 54 events:
The best part is, thanks to the donations of generous individuals, all of our Educational and Community programs are offered FOR FREE to all of our participants, audience members, and observers. Likewise, our online Education Resource Library with recordings of masterclasses and other valuable programs, is free to anyone with an internet connection—teachers, students, anyone with an interest in chamber music—attracted over 34,000 views last year!
Our education and community programs serve a broad demographic: families, people of all ages and diverse backgrounds, many classified as “underserved” due to economic, cultural, and/or other factors, or who don’t or cannot come to the concert hall because of real or perceived barriers such as health issues, transportation, or expense.
We thank our GlobalGiving donors for helping us share great chamber music through concerts, education, and community programs.
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