Skip to main content

Musicians for Michiana: The Music Village

Here’s my favorite thing about Kellirae Boann, of The Music Village.  When I make a suggestion she says, “Yes,” and then she says, “AND,” and she makes it bigger and better than I had even ever considered that it could be.  When I approached her hoping to perform a few concerts in her space the project rapidly turned into a four-concert series, featuring fourteen musicians, four non-profit organizations, two restaurants, a recording engineer, pre-concert lectures, a local print shop, a team of volunteers, a grant proposal, and the current crowd-funding campaign which I invite YOU to participate in. 

Kellirae and The Music Village have been my strategic partner in this project since its inception.  The Village will be hosting the concerts, in an intimate space just perfect for small-group chamber music and up-close audience engagement.  She and her superb staff and volunteers worked with me to refine the vision of the project and to craft a compelling grant proposal.  Working with The Music Village gives non-profit credibility to Musicians for Michiana (so your donations through Indiegogo are tax-deductible!), although we do intend to acquire our own non-profit status for next year. 

The vivid primary colors and friendly, casual atmosphere in their space are a dramatic contrast to many classical venues, and suggest the level of approachability I have always striven for in my own performances.  Although we can and will move upstairs to a larger and somewhat more formal hall when our attendees exceed the capacity of the room, I admit that I am quite looking forward to the intimacy and enforced proximity of audience and musicians for these interactive concerts. 

And perhaps my favorite part of the whole project is the community connection.  I’m a born introvert, so although I have lived in this town for years and eaten at the local restaurants and observed with pleasure the activities going on, I only really know people through my Symphony job and through my husband, the friendliest man in the world.  Now, through Musicians for Michiana and The Music Village, I have more connections than ever before, with people, organizations, and and happenings.  Our other partner organizations, Unity Gardens, Girls on the Run Michiana, and Hannah and Friends, are similarly outwardly focused, and I’m feeling my roots and networks growing and deepening by the day. 

I am beginning to feel as though our plan for a new chamber music series here in South Bend is more than just a pipe dream.  In fact, as our Indiegogo campaign inches through its allotted time, I not only believe in it, I believe in it wholeheartedly.  I think we’re going to do this. 

Still to come in this series of posts: The Partners.  The Concerts.  The Successful Conclusion!

Visit Musicians for Michiana HERE.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Zoe's Musical Beginnings

I've mentioned before that I started out on the piano by figuring out melodies.  Connecting notes and trying to learn how they worked.  I'm fascinated to observe that Zoe's initial approach to the instrument is totally different from mine. She sits at our new piano and plays random notes, and tells us what to feel.  If she is playing slowly then the music is sad, and we should cry. When we are "crying" she either gets up and hugs us so we feel better (so awesome!) or bangs faster, to indicate that the music is now happy and we should dance.  Her other piano game is accompanying herself - she plays "chords" in alternating hands while she "sings" the ABC song or Camptown Races or Sesame Street.  She makes us sing along.  She loves it when we clap at the end.  When I was little I wanted to know how music worked. Although I make my living as a performer now, I learned about the interpersonal aspects of music later.  Her immediate interest is in ...

Cleaning Your Reeds

Updated: I've posted a video of my plaque cleaning technique HERE ! Oboe reeds are made from organic material, and over time it is inevitable that they will age and change. The first few days of change are usually quite welcome, as you break the reed in by playing and the opening gradually settles down to something you can be comfortable with and the response becomes more and more predictable.  You might even hit a plateau where it appears to be perfectly consistent and reliable for several days! But after that, the reed seems to be on a constant gradually accelerating downslope, until it eventually collapses into a sharp, non-responsive, mushy mess. We can rejuvenate the reed during this time by cleaning it, and can often extend its life as well! There are three good ways to do this. First, least invasively, you can just run some fresh water through and over the reed AFTER you play each time.  Go ahead and rinse that reed in the sink, shake it as dry as possible, a...

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

We took a vacation this summer.   This is not news to anyone in my life - anyone who knows me or especially Steve on Facebook followed along with all of our pictures.   We took our travel trailer out to Arizona - via St Louis, Tulsa, Amarillo, Roswell, Santa Fe - and then stayed a week in Clarksdale and Flagstaff and visited some ancient pueblo ruins, Sedona, Jerome, the Lowell Observatory, the Grand Canyon.   We swam in swimming pools, lakes, and icy mountain streams.   We hiked.   Eventually we came home again, via Albuquerque, Amarillo, Tulsa, and St Louis. (our inventiveness had somewhat worn out).   After a week at home we took another trip, and drove to Vermont via western NY and the Adirondack Park (stayed an extra day to hike a mountain), lived four days in East Franklin VT, and came home via Catskill and eastern Ohio.   This vacation felt different from all of our previous ones.   In the 21 years we’ve been married, I can name on...