Author: Morse, Carol

Publication Year: 1964

Media Type: Report

Summary:

I think the name of Young Audiences is probably familiar to most of you as we started about fifteen years ago. It was the dream of two women - Mrs. Carolyn A. Perera and Mrs. Rosalie J. Leventritt - to bring music of fine quality by top-flighty professionals to children in school. The medium they would use would be string quartets, woodwind quartets, brass quintets, trios of all kinds, and voice groups. They started with two famous ensembles - the Juilliard String Quartet and the New York Woodwind Quintet - and they did a few concerts in New York City and Connecticut and several in Baltimore. I think in all it numbered about 56 in the first year. Now, fifteen years later, we are performing somewhere around 5,300 concerts annually. We have on our rostrum more than 600 performing artists, all of fine quality. We have a program we believe is good for everyone - good for the children and good for the musicians, many of whom perform in orchestras but love to play chamber music and have an opportunity to do it for a very enthusiastic and responsive audience. We hope that we are building audiences for tomorrow, in fact, we know we are. We see evidence of this already.

Abstract:

I think the name of Young Audiences is probably familiar to most of you as we started about fifteen years ago. It was the dream of two women - Mrs. Carolyn A. Perera and Mrs. Rosalie J. Leventritt - to bring music of fine quality by top-flighty professionals to children in school. The medium they would use would be string quartets, woodwind quartets, brass quintets, trios of all kinds, and voice groups. They started with two famous ensembles - the Juilliard String Quartet and the New York Woodwind Quintet - and they did a few concerts in New York City and Connecticut and several in Baltimore. I think in all it numbered about 56 in the first year. Now, fifteen years later, we are performing somewhere around 5,300 concerts annually. We have on our rostrum more than 600 performing artists, all of fine quality. We have a program we believe is good for everyone - good for the children and good for the musicians, many of whom perform in orchestras but love to play chamber music and have an opportunity to do it for a very enthusiastic and responsive audience. We hope that we are building audiences for tomorrow, in fact, we know we are. We see evidence of this already. (p. 103-104)

[Presented as part of the panel on Expanding Audiences for the Arts introduced by
 Oliver Rea. Additional presentations are all listed under Expanding Audiences for
 the Arts by Leslie Cheek, Jr.; Bradley G. Morison; Mark Schubart and Rise Stevens.]

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Participation