community engagement

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

Healing Hand of the Charlotte Symphony
The Charlotte Symphony believes in the restorative power of music. The Healing Hand program sends musicians from the orchestra into area hospitals, nursing homes and senior citizen centers to perform for patients, residents, and program participants. These free ensemble performances have taken place at Southminster Retirement Community, Carolinas Medical Center, Presbyterian Hospital, Presbyterian—Matthews, Mercy Hospital, the Jewish Community Center, and local nursing homes. The cost of the Healing Hand program is underwritten by private donations from individuals and organizations. 

Lollipops Pre-Concert Festival
The Pre-Concert Festival puts the musical experience right in kids' hands, through activities coordinated by the CSO Education Department. Kids meet the instruments of the orchestra at The Symphony Guild of Charlotte’s “Musical Petting Zoo,” participate in educational musical activities, and have fun making musical arts and crafts.

Musically Speaking: Pre-Concert Talks
Prior to each concert on the Classics Series, the Symphony presents Musically Speaking, informal and informative presentations about the music and its broader context. These events include presentations by expert speakers, interviews with guest conductors and artists, special performances, and brief but substantive analyses of the works on that evening’s performance to further enhance the musical experience of the audience.

Classics Pre-Concert Festivals
Each season, the Symphony hosts one or more cultural festivals in connection with a Classics concert program. Partners from the local international community are invited to set up tables with arts, crafts, historical information, etc. in the lobbies of the Belk Theater. Past events include a German/Austrian/Swiss festival and a festival celebrating countries of the former Soviet Union. The celebrations include food, drink, and entertainment that are representative of the geographical regions. This season’s cultural festival celebrates Scotland and Robert Burns night on January 14 and 15, 2011.

Community Speaking Engagements
Charlotte Symphony representatives provide lectures or presentations for various community events and local senior groups. These have included: Senior Scholars, The Shepherd’s Center, Sun City Lifelong Learning Club, Rotary Clubs, and Kiwanis Clubs. 

MLK
In celebration of the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Charlotte Symphony ensembles partner with local musicians from A Sign of the Times in January to perform jazz at the Historic Excelsior Club on Beatties Ford Road.

Charlotte Teachers Institute
In October 2010, the Charlotte Symphony will partner with the Charlotte Teachers Institute and the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art to present Exploding Canons: The Planets and Beyond, a symposium that explores Gustav Holst’s work The Planets in a variety of contexts: astronomy, mythology, anthropology, and musicology. The panel of speakers includes professors from UNC Charlotte, Davidson College, and Winthrop University.

PAST PROJECTS

Connections Underground Railroad Project
In partnership with the CONNECTIONS Underground Railroad Project, the CSO presented Toward a Life of Liberty: Chronicling the Paths from Slavery to Freedom, a free community event on Saturday, May 15, 2010 at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church. The event began on the church grounds at noon with the “Hidden Freedom Festival.” The festival, featuring face painting, storytelling, games, music, and The Symphony Guild of Charlotte Musical Petting Zoo, was followed at 4 p.m. by a program exploring the stories and struggles of freedom fighters. Students of the CONNECTIONS Underground Railroad Project were joined by composer Ted Gellar-Goad and professors Dr. Jeffrey Leak and Dr. Janaka Bowman Lewis of the UNC Charlotte Department of English. On May 16, 2010, the Charlotte Symphony Youth Orchestra performed Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by former CSYO musician Ted Gellar-Goad. Based on the famous slave narrative written in 1861 by Harriet Jacobs of Edenton, N.C., the work is scored for narrator and orchestra.

The Mill Community Project
Sponsored by the Wallace Foundation through the North Carolina Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mill Community Project was a special two-year initiative. The goal was to connect a group of people in a community to music through encounters with the art form that drew upon the community’s experience.

The Charlotte Symphony focused on the mill communities of the Piedmont because of the importance that mills and the textile industry have played and continue to play in the shaping of the area both culturally and economically. Over a two year period, CSO musicians, education staff and composer David Crowe collected oral histories from mill community members, attended seminars at the Levine Museum of the New South, explored images and artifacts from the textile mills and the mill villages, and read texts about the textile industry. From these sources, David Crowe created a multi-media work entitled Mill Village: A Piedmont Rhapsody for chamber orchestra. A CSO 12-piece chamber ensemble continues to perform this work, touring throughout Mecklenburg and the surrounding counties, and even to other parts of the state and into surrounding states.

Sinfónica de Charlotte
Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, this special initiative was designed to help the Symphony strengthen its relationship with Charlotte’s growing Latin American community. In 2007 the CSO, in partnership with The Latin American Chamber of Commerce, The Latin American Women’s Association, The Latin American Coalition and The Mint Museums, provided a series of five free community concerts performed by CSO chamber ensembles and local freelance Latin musicians and a special outdoor concert at the Symphony’s summer home in South Park. Each of the community performances was designed to highlight the strong, historical tie between Latin culture and classical music. The ensemble concerts performed were: El Día de los Muertos at the Levine Museum of the New South; Pre-Columbian Instruments and the Origin of Music at the Mint Museum of Art; Music of the Spanish Colonial Era at the Mint Museum of Art; Canciones y Música de Camara del Mundo Hispánico at St. Gabriel Catholic Church and Música Distinta del Mundo Viejo y el Nuevo, featuring guitar and percussion at Pura Vida Worldly Art Store and Gallery. The final outdoor performance with was titled Sinfónica con Sabor, Latin Night at Symphony Park and featured  Spanish choral music by Carolina Voices Festival Singers, Latin orchestral music by the Charlotte Symphony, and Cuban dance music by the Charlotte based Latin dance band Son de Cuba.