“It’s not exactly the $1.4 billion Powerball. But for the Nashville Symphony, the nearly $1 million grant it will receive from the Mellon Foundation is surely the next best thing,” writes John Pitcher in Tuesday’s (1/12) Nashville Scene (Tenn.) “The NSO announced today that it has received a $959,000 grant to fund a new education initiative called Accelerando. The initiative, which will officially launch in September, will establish a precollege program dedicated to training … minority orchestra musicians. ‘The grant will provide us with 75 percent of the funding we’ll need for Accelerando for the next six years,’ [says] Nashville Symphony education director Walter Bitner.… The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by the middle of this century, nearly half of the population will be non-white—Hispanic, African-American and Asian. Yet these groups are strikingly underrepresented in American orchestras. Accelerando promises to change that number. Starting in September, the program will open with six students, each of whom will study privately with members of the Nashville Symphony. The orchestra plans to admit an additional five students a year for the next five years.… The NSO will work with Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music, Metro Nashville Public Schools, Conexión Américas and Choral Arts Link.”
Posted January 13, 2016
