Founded in 2006, Chesapeake Music’s YouthReach program was developed as a response to an ongoing nationwide decline of funding and lack of prioritization for music education. Working collaboratively with the University of Maryland, Talbot Arts, and Easton Middle School to initiate a program using Doctoral Candidates to come to the Eastern Shore of Maryland for a residency and to work with the Middle School music programs. This program is a wonderful success that students look forward to every year!
Chesapeake Music also brings Ensemble Connect into classrooms both live and virtual to work with young music students. Ensemble Connect is a program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and the Weill Music Institute. Ensemble Connect is a two-year fellowship program which prepares extraordinary young professional classical musicians for careers that combine musical excellence with teaching, community engagement, advocacy, entrepreneurship, and leadership. Ensemble Connect offers top-quality performance opportunities, intensive professional development, and the opportunity to partner with us to realize our mission to bring renowned musicians to delight, engage and surprise today’s audiences and educate, inspire and develop tomorrow’s musicians.
Chesapeake Music To Present Kaleidoscope Quartet in Free Family Concert December 2, 2022
Easton, Maryland – Chesapeake Music will present a free Family Concert at 6:00 PM on December 2, 2022, in the Ebenezer Theater at 17 South Washington Street in Easton, Maryland. Tickets are not required. The concert will feature The Kaleidoscope Quartet, performing music of American women composers Florence Price, Reena Esmail and Gabriela Lena Frank. The interactive performance will encourage the audience to join the performers in exploring how composers reconcile and communicate their personal cultures and identities through their music.
The Family Concert, which is open to all members of the public, is part of a residency by the Kaleidoscope Quartet in the Talbot County Public School system sponsored by Chesapeake Music. The residency includes classroom visits and assemblies by the quartet at the Chapel District and White Marsh elementary schools.
The school visits by the quartet will provide students with a closer look at the quartet’s instruments, the collaborative music-making process and include excerpts from ‘An Andean Walkabout’ by Gabriela Lena Frank, a composer of contemporary classical music, recently recognized by the Heinz Award for “weaving Latin American influences into classical constructs and breaking gender, disability and cultural barriers in classical music composition.”
The Kaleidoscope Quartet members, Brian Hong (Violin), Ruben Rengel (Violin), Caeli Smith (Viola) and Arlen Hlusko (Cello), all alumni of top musical conservatories across the country, met in New York City and trained together at Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect Program. Following their completion of that program, they formed, and now perform as, the Kaleidoscope Quartet. When asked about the focus area of the quartet, violist Caeli Smith said “The players of the Kaleidoscope Quartet place a high value on personal, engaging musical concerts, and using music as a connector between audience and performer. They strive to offer connection and resonance to each listener, regardless of their experience with classical music.”
Chesapeake Music has an extended history of educational outreach to the Mid-Shore community, including its prior Youth Reach and First Strings programs, Chamber Music Festival Family Concerts,, discounted tickets to its chamber music, jazz and competition concerts, free open rehearsals for its annual two-week Chamber Music Festival and special video-recorded musical programs for students. Upcoming events in Chesapeake Music’s educational outreach program include local school visits in April 2023 by the Aero Saxophone Quartet, in connection with the quartet’s April 22, 2023 concert at the Ebenezer Theater.
For more information about the concert and Chesapeake Music’s programs, you may visit the Chesapeake Music website at Chesapeakemusic.org.
Ensemble Connect working virtually with Middle School students
We hope you enjoy this wonderful interview with Randall Goosby led by his teacher, Catherine Cho who is also one of Chesapeake Music’s Artistic Directors!
