Arts Activities Support

Twin Cities Jewish Chorale directed touched about 415 audience members at three concert performances, 39 Twin Cities Jewish Chorale members through rehearsals and performances, 40 Sholom Home residents and 25 Talmud Torah students at outreach programs. Twin Cities Jewish Chorale and Sabes Jewish Community Center Inclusion program provided the community musical experiences through a group of singers, with and without disabilities, sharing choral music with passion and enthusiasm. Twin Cities Jewish Chorale had two artistic goals. One goal was to provide the Twin Cities Jewish community choral music experiences that embodied Jewish culture and music the community may not hear otherwise. Twin Cities Jewish Chorale provided a different style of concert programming this year under the leadership of its new director, Jayson Rodovsky. Mr. Rodovsky has a wealth of knowledge of choral music and is acquainted with several current composers. As a result, he brought into the Chorale’s repertoire many new pieces for this season and future seasons. He also programmed this year’s concerts to include other local performers who enhanced each program’s theme and the overall experience. Each concert included a written program that listed pieces and performers and provided notes about them. In this way the audience’s experience was more than musical and visual; it was also educational! The rationale is the belief that a greater understanding of the music, text, and composers creates a richer experience for the audience. We believe we met our goal, judging by audience reactions at the concerts, and feedback following them, Chorale members, and Advisory Board members. This was particularly the case for the June concerts. The June concerts were programmed to feature Jewish humor and fun, and the atmosphere within the performance space was to make that easier to experience. The February concert was the first for the director and choir as a team. Glitches and jitters from that concert informed our plans for upcoming rehearsals and concerts. Also, the positive reactions to adding other performers to the program reinforced our conviction that sharing a concert with varied musical partners creates a much richer experience for the audience and participants. There were 215 people of a range of ages in the audience for the February 2016 concert. The June concerts brought in around 250 people. The Chorale’s second goal was to increase the consistency of its artistic growth. The success of this goal was difficult to measure. A variety of rehearsal strategies were used: the use of online listening aids increased; the number of sectionals increased significantly over previous years; Gary Wolfman, himself a conductor, helped run those sectionals; Max Elkin, a long-standing promoter of the Yiddish language in this region, coached the group on its Yiddish pieces as he has done in the past; each rehearsal focused on blend, intonation, dynamics, tempo, and phrasing. All of these efforts were valuable to the Chorale singers. Core members of the group are amateur performers who love to sing. The large amount of time in rehearsal was necessary; the modeling, creative coaching, and practice were important to the singers. Overall, especially by the June concerts, the group could communicate the music’s message with enough confidence to communicate the pleasure they felt performing it as well. As a choral group, Twin Cities Jewish Chorale experienced changes this year that gave the group a slightly different persona. There was more variety in the concert programs. Mr. Rodovsky added several performers to each concert (e.g., four cantors from local synagogues; The Sons, a group of local musicians; two Twin Cities Jewish Chorale members performing on piano and violin; and local members of Hazamir: The International Jewish High School Choir). And the spring concerts were within a cabaret setting. All of this provided regular attendees to Twin Cities Jewish Chorale concerts new experiences. It also created a rich musical experience for newcomers to Twin Cities Jewish Chorale concerts or to Jewish choral music in general. Another change from previous seasons was to add a second June concert so that one would be on a Thursday evening and the other on a Sunday afternoon. Past seasons only had Sunday afternoon concerts. The intention for this change was to reach community members who would find an evening concert easier to attend than Sunday afternoon concerts. The June concerts drew a larger audience than previous June concerts and were much more enthusiastically received. We attribute this partly to the programming changes described above and the addition of a second performance. This year, we tried a new measurement tool that turned out to be unsuccessful. We provided audience members a simple, short survey on their tables at the Sunday afternoon concert as a way to get more audience feedback. It was meant to be informal, with no pressure to participate. Unfortunately, the response was very limited. Next time, we will add more of an incentive to the process and, hopefully, attract more responses. Part of our outreach this season was to collaborate with the Inclusion program at Sabes Jewish Community Center, a program through which people with special needs can participate in all Sabes Jewish Community Center programs. The Chorale's original plan was to have a performance with an educational focus on choral singing and on the particular pieces being performed. However this evolved into a plan in which members of the Inclusion program could join the Chorale and fully participate in rehearsals and concerts throughout the season, with the support of two Inclusion staff members and a great deal of between-rehearsal support within the Inclusion program. This proved to be a highly successful plan, benefiting members of both organizations as well as concert audiences. It is a plan Twin Cities Jewish Chorale and the Inclusion program would like to continue into the next season.