(PNAN-MS) – It takes practice, practice, practice to get to Carnegie Hall, but it takes a partnership to bring Carnegie Hall to Mississippi, and through Carnegie Hall’s Communities LinkUP! program and their Weill Music Institute, the Mississippi Arts Commission is partnering with Mississippi symphony orchestras to bring students an opportunity to study orchestral music and to perform with the orchestra. Each symphony receives $5,000 from the MAC to support the program.
Communities LinkUP! is a program that shares Carnegie Hall’s educational expertise and resources with orchestras and school districts throughout the United States. In addition to providing standards-based curriculum, the program enables orchestras to expand their current education programs and to strengthen relationships with their surrounding schools and community.
“This unique collaboration began as a pilot program in 2003 with the University of Southern Mississippi Symphony Orchestra,” said Malcolm White, Executive Director of the Mississippi Arts Commission. “We have now enlarged the partnership to include three additional symphonies. It is our plan to expand this innovative educational opportunity to encompass all of the symphony orchestras in Mississippi, with the ultimate idealistic goal of reaching every 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade student statewide.”
The Communities LinkUP! program increases students’ performing, creating and listening skills through a series of sequentially linked activities, which include classroom instruction as well as interactive orchestra concerts. The culmination of the yearlong program is a live orchestra performance with the participating students, which provides them with the opportunity to apply the musical concepts they have studied.
For more information on the 2010-2011 performance dates, see www.arts.state.ms.us.