Tuesday (10/4) on the Los Angeles Times blog Culture Monster, Reed Johnson reports, “The Los Angeles Philharmonic, building on its symbiotic relationship with Venezuela’s El Sistema national youth music training program, is partnering with Bard College in upstate New York and the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Mass., to launch a joint musical education initiative. ‘Take a Stand’ aims to provide a platform of regular conferences and workshops for pioneering classical music educators across the United States, and also to develop a pool of artistically accomplished, socially conscious music teachers through a new Masters of Arts in Teaching degree program that will be developed by the Longy conservatory. … The initiative’s inaugural conference will be held Jan. 30 through Feb. 1 in Los Angeles, coinciding with the Phil’s Mahler Project, at which Dudamel, the Phil and the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela will be collaborating in concert performances and working together with students in the Phil’s Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA). The new one-year master’s teaching program will enroll its first class in June, said Karen Zorn, president of Longy, with the goal of helping highly skilled musicians become teachers who can be active participants in the needy communities where many will serve. … The annual cost of the program is roughly $1 million, which will be funded by the L.A. Phil and Longy, Zorn said.”
Posted October 5, 2011
