Community Arts
ACHF Arts Access
The Summer Singers will strive to provide a meaningful artistic experience for both performers and an increasing audience through five free concerts performed in July 2016, including reaching new audiences through our two Family Concerts, which contain a special emphasis for the very young. With the second annual Young Composers Initiative, we hope to expand the number of young composers entering the competition. Gathering feedback from the performers will help us evaluate the experience that The Summer Singers has provided for these singers who desire to keep on singing" through the summer. By comparing concert attendance and Young Composer Initiative participation with that of 2015 we will be able to evaluate our attempts to increase both numbers."
Sweet Dreams was designed to create an engaging experience for our singers and our audience members to be absolutely captivated by music. Performers and listeners explored the indescribable powers of music that give us inspiration, motivation, and fantasy through the incredible works by Daniel Brinsmead, Paul Mealor, Eriks Ešenvalds, Eric Whitacre, and Daniel Elder. Sweet Dreams included the second annual Young Composer Initiative. This program created an annual call for scores from composers age 25 or younger with the recipient’s work that was performed on the Sweet Dreams program. This project received a high volume of praise from singers and audience members alike in the music selected for the program. The programming of music creative and many commented on the wonderful flow of the program. The piece "We Can Mend the Sky" by Jake Runestad was selected to close the concert and this finale tied in the dream-like theme to the practical application of helping others in our community obtain their dreams. Therefore from an artistic perspective, a high level of music making that was appreciated by our audience members and ensemble members were achieved. The project was also successful in that ensemble members evaluated their level of preparedness to be very high as the entered the concert series. In 2015, the first Young Composer's Competition was created and we were delighted to receive 14 applications. This year, we received 60 submissions from young composers primarily in the USA, but also from around the world. This boost can be attributed to more exposure on choralnet.org and a posting on the American Composer Forum's website. This season, our goal was to transition the family concerts from being hosted in a church to libraries with the intent on reaching a broader population as well as targeting communities that Metropolitan Regional Arts Council describes as Distinct Groups: below the poverty line, individuals with limited English proficiency, and youth at risk. This part of the project was not as successful as we struggled to find libraries that would champion our project and promote it to the youth at their library. However, once the performance was completed, the library staff was overly enthusiastic about our project and very thankful for us to have come. Both concerts were scheduled in a way that would target students when they were naturally at the library, however both concerts were under-attended in respects to our goal outreach. We believe that this outreach has great potential and hope that the libraries will help us continue to grow attendance and impact for the future. Sweet Dreams was successful in providing free concerts to our community at a high level of music artistry. This has been a trademark of The Summer Singers. The support of the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council grant along with a growing Sustainer group of financial supporters and work of fundraising by the board allowed Sweet Dreams to be completely open and accessible to everyone. Sweet Dreams was successful in reaching our longtime concert supporters with positive concert reviews. Our outreach efforts, specifically the family concerts, were successful at reaching a demographic that is diverse from the race/ethnic background of the majority of our traditional concert attendees. The attendance at our Family Concerts put those that would identify as white/not Hispanic in the minority, however over the span of the entire project, this did not account for at least 25% of the benefitting population. Our marketing strategy for the Family Concerts has been to try and take the music to where a more diverse population may be located. This creates the challenge, especially at the libraries, of finding the best time that the library will be full and leaves the numbers of audience members a little more up to chance. We need to develop more strategies for attracting audience members in the future. The attitude of the ensemble was positive about the project. 85% of singers responded that the season was "about what I expected" or "don't change a thing" when surveying their overall experience. When asking returning singers how they would rate the level of preparation this year compared to last year, over 85% responded with a 4 or 5, with 5 being excellent and 1 being poor.
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