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Arts Commission News
Communities LinkUp! concert tomorrow at USM
DATE: May 18, 2010
CONTACT: Susan Dobbs, Public Relations Director
601/359-6031, sdobbs@arts.state.ms.us
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
It takes practice to get to Carnegie Hall, but it takes a partnership to bring Carnegie Hall to Mississippi!
Through Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute (WMI) Communities LinkUP! Program, the Mississippi Arts Commission is partnering with Mississippi’s symphony orchestras to bring students an opportunity to study orchestral music and to perform with the orchestra.
“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. “This year, we enlarged the partnership to include the Meridian Symphony Orchestra and next year the Gulf Coast Symphony Orchestra will be included. It is our goal to expand this innovative educational opportunity to encompass all of the symphony orchestras in Mississippi, thereby reaching more children across the state.”
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, Communities LinkUP! enables orchestras to expand their current education programs and to strengthen relationships with their surrounding schools and community. Targeted for students in the fourth through sixth grades, the WMI 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 will be a live orchestra performance with the participating students. On Wednesday, May 19, 2010 at 10:00am, students from Hattiesburg and the surrounding area will be performing in Bennett Auditorium with the USM Symphony Orchestra.
The Mississippi Arts Commission is a state agency funded by the Mississippi Legislature, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Phil Hardin Foundation, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi Foundation, the Mississippi Endowment for the Arts at the Community Foundation of Greater Jackson, and other private sources. MAC is the official grants-making and service agency for the arts in Mississippi. The agency serves as an active supporter and promoter of arts in community life and in arts education.
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