Community Arts

We believe that we did achieve our artistic goals. We presented the Anoka audience with a wide range of chamber music performed by some of the region's best musicians. The amount of rehearsal was sufficient to allow the performers to do their best. Post-performance discussions with the artists indicate that all were pleased and would be happy to perform on a Joya concert in the future. What worked particularly well was the balance in the musical selections. The audience and performers were challenged and energized by the more modern selections but also greatly enjoyed the more traditional classical works. We are proud of our dedication to high level artistry and all of the performers were equally dedicated. The ability to retain top notch talent is certainly one of the strengths of our process. Another strength is our planning, particularly regarding rehearsals. Months in advance we gathered all of the performers schedules/conflicts and worked out a rehearsal schedule that worked for all. Our biggest challenges are related more to logistics and publicity. In particular, it is challenging to promote the concerts adequately and a failure to do so could result in a smaller than desired audience. Despite these challenges we did manage to average 250 audience members at each concert which exceeded our goal of 200. We did reach our intended community. Our audience members were mostly from the Anoka area but there were audience members from all over the Twin Cities area. We were also able to serve the artists by presenting them the opportunity to perform chamber music in a visually and acoustically beautiful venue before a most appreciative audience. We did achieve most of our goals regarding diversity. The performer's ranged in age from 30 to 63. The performers were also diverse as regards their background/professional situation: ranging from an independent freelance violist to the Music Director of the Minnesota Orchestra. The concert with Maestro Vänskä and Concertmaster Keefe, likely due to their "celebrity" factor, was successful in attracting many audience members that would not otherwise attend a chamber music concert. That same concert was also successful in attracting more students than any previous Joya concert. Attracting more students remains one of our goals and we hope that to find ways to increase the attendance of students/young people at future Joya concerts. We are grateful to the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council and its grant proposal process for highlighting accessibility concerns that we might not have otherwise considered. The writing of the grant put accessibility at the forefront of our minds. This directly led to us allowing audiences members with disabilities to seat early so that they would not be at a disadvantage in selecting a seat and would not have to "race the crowd." One (elderly) couple commented too us, "We just can't travel downtown anymore. If it weren't for Joya, we would not get to hear such wonderful live music." Other accessibility concerns were accommodated as described in our narrative. The venue, Zion Lutheran Church, provides a highly accessible space including parking, elevators, and wheel chair seating. We continued our tradition of having one of the performers verbally describe each piece. This is done partially to educate the audience but also to allow those who cannot read the program to still know the selections being performed. We would like to find ways to attract more students. We did offer free admission to students and plan to continue to do so in the future. We had a goal of 200 people per concert and averaged 250. 500 people attended the two concerts that were performed by 7 different artists. We received feedback from audience members that included comment such as: Joya performances are the very best concerts one can attend in the Twin Cities, and I don't just mean chamber music concerts"; "The Joya concerts are a highlight of our lives."