Music Institute of Chicago Community Festival Report 2015

April 17-May 2, 2015 116 performances All around our communities!

at 75 venues in 18 cities across Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin & Indiana

COMMUNITY

MUSIC

a sampling of performance venues includes:

F E S T I VA L

100

concerts in

16

days !

The Music Institute of Chicago is a community music school dedicated to transforming lives through music and music education. Our students are of every age and all levels of experience. The Community Music Festival: 100 Concerts in 16 Days is a community service project, bringing live music to libraries, hospitals, community centers and many other important places in our community.

Details & Schedule at: musicinst.org/cms-festival Follow us on twitter @miccommunity | #MIC100 Major Media Sponsorship provided by:

All Souls Anglican Church, Wheaton, IL Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods, Deerfiled, IL Crystal Ballroom & Lounge, Evanston, IL CTA Stations, Evanston & Chicago, IL Evanston Library, Evanston, IL Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL Kohl Children’s Museum, Glenview, IL Lieberman Center, Skokie, IL Lurie Children’s Hospital, Chicago, IL Maryhaven Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, Glenview, IL Misericordia, Chicago, IL North Shore Hospital, Evanston, IL Piano Forte, Chicago, IL Pilgrim Chamber Players, Highland Park, IL Presbyterian Homes, Evanston, IL Ravinia, Highland Park, IL Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL Rotary Club of Evanston, Evanston, IL Second Church of Christ Scientist, Chicago, IL Self Help Home for Jewish Elderly, Chicago, IL Skokie Public Library, Skokie, IL St. Giles Episcopal Church, Northbrook, IL Mather Homes, Evanston, IL The Arts Club of Chicago, Chicago, IL The Chicago Temple, Chicago, IL The Hartwell, Chicago, IL WFMT, Chicago, IL William Harris Lee, Wilmette, IL Writers Theater, Glencoe, IL Wyndemere Senior Living Center, Wheaton, IL YMCA McGaw, Evanston, IL

537 total participants

of which 458 were MIC students. (other participants included faculty, staff and MIC alumni or family members)

MIC students from 61 communities

represented

82 MIC faculty studios

across 8 campus locations

(includes Academy program at Ravinia)

to reach approximately 8,000 people!

WHEN COMMUNITY SERVICE BECOMES A 16-DAY MUSIC FESTIVAL John von Rhein April 14, 2015

Giving back to the community, with 125 mostly free musical performances near you.

Mark George, head of the Music Institute of Chicago Photo © William DeShazer

Over the next three weeks, one of the Midwest's and the nation's leading music schools is kicking up its commitment to community service a couple of notches.

Make that 125 notches.

That's the number of informal concerts students and faculty of the Music Institute of Chicago will present at community and senior centers, libraries, churches, hospitals, nursing and rehabilitation centers and other grassroots venues across the Chicago area.

The vast majority of those events are free, and they are all part of the institute's jam-packed Community Music Festival, a 16-day marathon of classical and jazz performances that begin Friday and will run to May 3.

The festival, explains MIC president and CEO Mark George, is the Evanston-based institution's way of giving back to the many communities it has served in the course of the 85 years it has been changing lives through music education.

It is also, he says, a means of sharing the talents of the school's thousands of music students, of all ages and levels of musicmaking experience, particularly with ordinary people who may appreciate classical music but who have few opportunities to access the live article.

George does not hesitate in calling the scope of the festival unprecedented for a local educational institution.

"Ours is the biggest community service music project that I know of," says the MIC chief executive, 54, who has been brainstorming and fine-tuning the festival with faculty, staff and students since spring 2014. "Coordinating the 125 events has been a logistical mountain, really an all-hands-on-deck operation. Not-for-profit organizations are not known for being overstaffed, so I'm indebted to every one of my colleagues, and all the musicians who are volunteering their services for this project."

George, an accomplished concert pianist along with being a nationally recognized educator and administrator, doesn’t mind saying that the festival effectively will serve as a fundraising and public relations tool for the music institute, in addition to being a showcase for student musicians ranging from the very young to retirees.

If some of the folks who catch the free programs come away with an awareness of the comprehensive range of music education available to the more than 2,000 students who take private lessons and courses at the school’s North Shore network of campuses, it might just inspire them to enroll in a class, or to take up that musical instrument they’ve always been hankering to play.

“In addition to being known as an excellent music school, we of course want the community to know that our doors are open,” says George, whom the Tribune named its 2011 Chicagoan of the Year in classical music. “We want them to know that, far from being a rarefied experience, music is something people can come and learn and absorb.”

Many hundreds of MIC students, he points out, are underprivileged and receive scholarship monies raised through various means, including MIC’s annual spring fundraising galas.

Along with a full range of services through its community music school, the institute operates its remarkable Academy, which last fall began its ninth year as an elite, pre-conservatory training center for students with exceptional talent and career potential.

Which brings us back to the Community Music Festival.

Some festival offerings, particularly those to be given at area medical and rehab facilities, are open only to residents, but those that are open to the general public span a wide spectrum of music and performers. Chamber music will take center stage at many performances, but piano recitals, jazz and a great deal else also will be on display, if you know where to look.

George explains the rationale and objectives behind the festival thus: "I have always thought that musicians have a special responsibility to other people to their community," he says. "It's not just the aesthetics of making music – there is an ethical responsibility as well. There is a connection to be made between a performer and a listener, especially if it's in close proximity, that consoles, heals, provides joy – pretty much anything people may need at that moment. I want to make sure that that idea, that value, is instilled in all of our students."

Bringing music to the community is one important means of achieving that, and the takeaway for the student participants is immeasurable, he believes.

"I really want our students to see that all of this time and effort they and their parents put in to their music lessons really has value beyond dollars and cents. If, following the end of their study time at the institute, they walk away with that idea in their heads, I feel we will have succeeded."

Ticketed concerts by the Cavani and Ying string quartets will bookend the MIC's otherwise free Community Music Festival. The former ensemble will perform at 3 p.m. Sunday; the latter, at 7:30 p.m. May 2.

MIC faculty and Academy pianists will present a free round-robin recital on pianist Vladimir Horowitz's legendary Steinway "Concert D 503" piano at 7 p.m. April 22.

All three festival concerts will take place in Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston; tickets for the Cavani and Ying concerts are $30, $20 for seniors, $10 for students; 800-838-3006, brownpapertickets.com/event/851979.

For a full schedule of festival events, visit musicinst.org/cms-festival.

Copyright © 2015, Chicago Tribune

26 additional placements.

highlights include:

North Shore Magazine: Tammy McCann feature mentioning the project

Chicago Tribune: Critics’ Picks

Modern Luxury: Mark George feature on topic of the festival

Daily Northwestern: interview/article

Pioneer Press/suburban Chicago Tribune preview feature and photo

Chicago Splash Magazine: Horowitz review with photos

Make It Better: 5 Things To Do: April 17–19 first listing

Chicago Tribune: Ying Quartet in Classical Corner column in On the Town

Crain’s Chicago Business: 10 Things To Do Horowitz mention and photo

Festival Participant Daily Social Media Student Spotlights

Festival Participant Daily Social Media Student Spotlights

Festival Participant Daily Social Media Student Spotlights

COMMUNITY MUSIC FESTIVAL 2015

100 Concerts in 16 Days!

20

instruments (from the strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion, keyboard and harp departments) were represented in the festival.

The collective number of years MIC participants studied:

2,615 (or an average of 5.7 years/student).