• Overview
• Workshops
• Repertoire
• Study Guide
• Free Concert Reservations

OVERVIEW

"Orchestra of St. Luke's pioneered a groundbreaking educational program that would reach more than a million public school children, providing a fundamental understanding of music, inspiring new musicians and composers, and fostering future audiences of classical music."

- Mayor Michael Bloomberg

"Orchestra of St. Luke's Day" Proclamation, December 6, 2006

St. Luke's MUSICIANS TALK WITH STUDENTS AFTER A SCHOOL-day CONCERT IN BROOKLYN

Although best known for its high-profile artistic activities, such as its annual Carnegie Hall Series, the Orchestra of St. Luke's has long been an advocate for Arts Education. For over 33 years, the Orchestra of St. Luke's has established an innovative and far-reaching Educational Program for New York City Public School students, particularly those most underserved.

St. Luke's Arts Education Program mission includes sustainability, flexibility, and collaboration. For its 30th Anniversary, the Program designed its first-ever arts education strategic plan to ensure the future vitality and excellence of performances and school partnerships.

Today, St. Luke's reaches more than 20,000 students every year through a combination of free performances and in-school partnerships. 90% of the programs audiences are inner-city students. Over 95% are African-American and Hispanic, and 68% are eligible for free or reduced lunch programs. The program also targets children with special needs as well as those with limited English proficiency.

"an innovative and welcome educational force for three decades"
- Barrymore Laurence Scherer, The Wall Street Journal

St. Luke's continues to explore innovative collaboration as a way to improve the quality of its programs. Each year, St. Luke's works closely with visual artists, dancers, choreographers, animators, and digital artists to produce creative activities and performances that integrate musical experiences with other art forms. While instrumental music remains central to its educational activities, students in the Program encounter connections to other arts disciplines including dance, visual art, opera, choral music, and digital media.

The Orchestra of St. Luke's Arts Education Program consists of three primary elements:

Free performances

• Free Education Performances (New productions each Fall and Spring)
• Free Chamber Music Performances (Spring performances)
• Free Family Concerts (Spring performances)

School Partnerships

• Teaching artists collaborate with classroom teachers in creative and conceptual arts residencies that support school learning goals
• Musicians collaborate with school music teachers to prepare young musicians to participate in OSL Education performances
• Comprehensive range of professional development activities linking music and musicians, collaborating artists, and teachers and teaching artists with ideas and activities to share in the classroom and the concert hall

Music Coaching and Instruction

• Instrumental Instruction and Chamber Music Coaching
• Young Composers Program

Initiatives are tailored to the needs of students and teachers to inspire creative exploration and nurture artistic expression. These activities create a rich and compelling experience for today's youth. We challenge students and adults to learn, engage them as perceptive audience members, and encourage their creativity.

"When I heard my music it was fantastic because every instrument was like a part of a puzzle being put together. I HAD A GREAT TIME! P.S. I want to keep learning music."
- Student Composer

FREE PERFORMANCES

St. Luke's Arts Education Program produces full-scale, professional performances for nearly 20,000 New York City Public School students each year, free of charge. Students from all five boroughs travel on buses and subways to major New York City concert venues to hear performances by such composers as Copland, Handel, Stravinsky, and Vivaldi, and to see such notable dance companies as Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane & Co., the Limon Company, Taylor 2, and Freefall Modern Dance Company. The outstanding musicians of the Orchestra of St. Luke's are collaborators in these performances, providing live music, visiting classrooms and coaching young instrumentalists.

Preparatory curriculum materials created by and for teachers, teaching artists, and students are distributed prior to the performance. Professional development sessions for teachers, teaching artists, and collaborating artists offer additional insight into the artistic content of the performances.


School Partnerships

St. Luke's DANCE TEACHING ARTIST WORKS WITH STUDENTS AT MS 131 IN MANHATTAN.

With the goal of augmenting and enhancing music and dance instruction in public schools, St. Luke's Arts Education Program has developed a program that places both music and dance teaching artists in elementary and middle schools around New York City.

Teaching artists and teachers develop project-based residency programs that connect artistic ideas that emerge from each OSL Education performance with learning goals identified by teachers from their own classrooms. OSL's teaching artists and mentor musicians also collaborate with school-based music teachers to support skills-based and artistic development of music students within the NYCDOE Blueprint framework.

Students participate in 16 teaching artist sessions during the school year clustered around attendance at three performances throughout the school year. Generally students explore ideas and concepts found in the music through a series of classroom activities that culminate in a performance project that unifies classical music and student experience.


Philosophy

Orchestra of St. Luke's performs with thE LaGuardia High School cHorus, conductor Xian Zhang, & pianist Mikhail Yanovitsky

Music is the central focus of the Orchestra of St. Luke's educational approach. The expressivity and structure of music are explored through a broad range of creative sound, movement, visual art, theater and writing activities. Classroom activities in music can illustrate the physical, visual, and spatial ways in which dancers and artists interpret sound.

The ultimate goal is to support students' development of creative thinking and expression while broadening their awareness of how music works, how it can sound, and the emotions it can convey.

Outreach

Since the inception of this program in 1976, St. Luke's Arts Education Program has introduced over one million students to the beauty and power of the performing arts. We are delighted to share our part of New York City's artistic and cultural richness with young New Yorkers of diverse cultural, economic, and linguistic backgrounds, from schools and neighborhoods across the city.

Contact Us

Email St. Luke's Arts Education Program at education@OSLmusic.org to develop a rewarding partnership with us.

St. Luke's Musicians in the Schools
OSL musicians Carl Albach, Eriko Sato, & Naoko Tanaka (clockwise from top) coach young musicians from the New York City Public School system.
Cellist Daire FitzGerald leads a violin class at P.S. 173 in New York (left) and tutors a high school student (right).