Education
The Festival of Orchestras and its corporate partners view these world-class symphony concerts as priceless opportunities to change young lives and to enhance Central Florida education and quality of life. For each Festival concert, we provide several dozen tickets for motivated fifth-grade music students from Central Florida elementary schools. This program also provides one ticket for each participating music teacher, plus one parent admission per student.
These students are not simply trucked en masse to the concert. Rather, in this merit-based program, each young person has produced a winning essay — as judged by a music teacher — about why they would like to attend a symphony orchestra concert. Essay winners attend a concert, enjoy a cookie and punch reception and, when possible, go backstage to meet a famous soloist during the concert intermission. Meeting a world-class artist provides an indelible memory that will stay with a youngster forever.
Festival of Orchestras - Kids Kids Kids Program
In this tough economic environment just about everyone is feeling the pinch and school music programs are no different. In fact, one of the first programs to be eliminated or scaled back tends to be music. Festival of Orchestras launched The Great Composers to offer a free in-school presentation of classical music, made possible through Target.
This educational program is presented by teacher and concert pianist, Dr. Anne McLean as she explores the many sides of Mozart’s genius – his great interest in opera, his love of performing his own piano concertos, and his brave decision to become a free-lance composer. Children will come to understand the difficulties that Mozart had to endure; the authority of the State and the Church was never questioned in the mid-18th century until Mozart decided to compose without the approval of either the Archbishop or the Emperor. The magical sounds of his lovely music still charms us in the 20th century. Musical illustrations will be performed on piano, or enjoyed on CD.
In this tough economic environment just about everyone is feeling the pinch and local music programs are no different. In fact, one of the first school programs to be eliminated or scaled back tends to be music. Many local music programs have been impacted and to help make up the shortfall, Festival of Orchestras has launched ArtsGiving, a charity drive to collect gently used instruments of all kinds.
ArtsGiving is a charity instrument drive to benefit music education for children through A Gift For Music, Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Florida and Howard Middle School. As Chairperson of our board, Pamela Cox expressed her desire for the Festival to give back to the community and encourage our patrons to participate. “In addition to our student education programs, I felt as an organization we could do more. Artsgiving will give our patrons and the community the opportunity to invest in the musicians of tomorrow and provide them with the resources they need to be successful.”
Festival of Orchestras - ArtsGiving
ArtsGiving will give individuals the opportunity to donate their used instruments in working or repairable condition. Every instrument will find a new home in the hands of a child. All instrument donations will be collected at the Festival of Orchestras office in Winter Park and each Festival concert throughout the season. In receipt of your donated instrument, the Festival will provide a donation letter for your tax records as well as enter your name in a drawing for a Festival of Orchestras 2009-2010 season ticket. Monetary donations will also be accepted and used to repair any donated instruments not in operable condition. Please join us as we join A Gift For Music, Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Florida, and Howard Middle School to improve the music education of students in the Central Florida community.
A Special Thank You to *NSYNC’s Chris Kirkpatrick for his generous support of the ArtsGiving program, and the Boys and Girls Club of Central Florida.
Pamela Cox, *NSYNC's Chris Kirkpatrick, Festival of Orchestras Executive Director Susan Carey, and Boys and Girls Club's Magdar Duperval
*NSYNC's Chris Kirkpatrick