Mississippi Arts Commission: News

MAC and Carnegie Hall Announce Expansion of Communities Link-Up! Program

DATE:         September 29 , 2010  

CONTACT:    Susan Dobbs, Public Relations Director

601/359-6031, sdobbs@arts.state.ms.us

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

JACKSON—It takes practice, practice, practice to get to Carnegie Hall, but it takes a partnership to bring Carnegie Hall to Mississippi.

Through Carnegie Hall’s Communities LinkUP! Program and their Weill Music Institute, the Mississippi Arts Commission is partnering with Mississippi symphony orchestras to bring students an opportunity to study orchestral music and to perform with the orchestra. 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. 

“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.  “We have now enlarged the partnership to include three additional symphonies. It is our plan to expand this innovative educational opportunity to encompass all of the symphony orchestras in Mississippi, with the ultimate, albeit idealistic, goal of reaching every 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade student statewide.” The University of Southern Mississippi Symphony Orchestra, the Meridian Symphony Orchestra, the Mississippi Gulf Coast Symphony Orchestra, and the Mississippi Symphony Orchestra are currently participating in this unique arts education initiative.  Each symphony receives $5,000 from the Mississippi Arts Commission to support the program.

The 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 is a live orchestra performance with the participating students, which provides them with the opportunity to apply the musical concepts they have studied. This unique field trip often serves as the students’ first experience in a performance hall. The concerts will take place during the 2010-2011 school year, and the performance dates will be available on the Mississippi Arts Commission website at www.arts.state.ms.us.

The Mississippi Arts Commission is a state agency funded by the Mississippi Legislature, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Riley 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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