Fall, 2009: "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi, a multi-media presentation & performance
Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) presented “The Four Seasons” by Antonio Vivaldi, a multi-media presentation and performance by members of Orchestra of St. Luke’s as the first installment of Arts Education Concerts for 2009-10. Six Concerts were offered FREE of charge to all students in the New York City public school system on a first-come, first-serve basis through an online reservation system. Nearly six-thousand students from schools in the New York City area attended this series, with a wait-list of over nine thousand students from schools in the New York City - a record level of demand for OSL Arts Education Concerts. While members of Orchestra of St. Luke’s performed, a big screen on stage displayed original images and animation created specifically for this program by OSL Partner School students. For the first time, OSL hired a professional audio-visual company, A V Workshop, with a specialty in big-screen projections, and movie theater quality screen size and image clarity was achieved.
Spring, 2009: “What Is American Music? The Asian Influence”
This production featured music for percussion, strings and winds in collaborative performance with a world-renowned Chinese modern dance company, H. T. Chen and Dancers came to life for the second installment of the OSL 2008-2009 FREE Arts Education Concerts theme “What Is American Music?” which included works by composers Chen Yi and Zhou Long. H. T. Chen’s original choreography for this program, entitled “Between Heaven and Earth” was a suite of dances inspired by the evocative scores of Chen Yi and Zhou Long. According to the choreographer, “like the many pieces of music, each dance is a unique and distinct choreographic creation; when strung together, the sections have the power to create a dream-like scenario of watching cloud formations change from warriors, to celestial beings, to images of nature.”
Fall, 2008: “What Is American Music? New York City: The Great Migration and Ellis Island"
This program prompted teaching and learning about the cultural contributions of succeeding generations of new New Yorkers that is aligned with New York City Department of Education Social Studies curricula, as well as the NYCDOE Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts. The Orchestra of St. Luke’s performed music by American composers George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, William Grant Still, and Scott Joplin, as well as American-influenced music by Europeans Antonin Dvorák and Bohuslav Martinu.
Spring, 2008: "Words Are Everything"
A re-contextualized version of Dido and Aeneas, an opera composed over 300 years ago by the English composer Henry Purcell, came to life for the second installment of the OSL 2007-2008 FREE Arts Education Concerts entitled "Inside the Mind of the Composer.” Through collaboration between the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the LaGuardia High School of Music, Art, and the Performing Arts Senior Chorus, six professional opera singers, and Jody Oberfelder Dance Projects, a production spanning a number of artistic disciplines was presented to over six thousand students from schools in the New York City area.
Fall, 2007: “Rhythm Is Everything"
This series, part of a year-long theme entitled “Inside the Mind of the Composer,” utilized the music of Beethoven, Mozart, Offenbach and Rossini to explore how a composer takes a rhythmic idea and turns it into a whole piece of music. Performances, offered free of charge to students grades K-12 in New York City schools took place at the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem, NY and at the acclaimed Brooklyn High School of the Arts in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, NY. Collaborating with a group of motion-graphics designers, a cutting-edge, multi-media presentation was included in the fiber of these performances. With this new technology, students were given the opportunity to become orchestral conductors; using laser-based - motion sensitive technology the students, pre-selected from OSL partner schools, were able to forge a deeper bond with the rhythm of the pieces being performed as they were given the resource and inspiration to decided the pace and dynamic of images on a projection screen. This tool further illuminates the “everything” that rhythm truly is. For those in the audience, this treatment offered a striking visual element.