Over the past year, the Foundation, thanks to our donors, has contributed thousands of dollars to music education in our schools. Band instruments, digital pianos, the trip to Florida…the list goes on and on.
One of the most inspiring grants the Foundation has funded was the one written by High School Music Teacher Bree Mitchell for a workshop and performance conducted by the Eclectic String Music Ensemble (ESME), a classically trained acoustic string music group. ESME includes musicians from world renowned performing arts organizations, including the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the Grand Rapids Ballet.
“The Orchestra students benefited greatly from working with the Eclectic String Music Ensemble,” Mitchell says. “Working with a professional group who are experts in chamber music and popular music gave us new opportunities to play fun music that was familiar to the students and challenging to them as musicians. ESME was able to give us feedback on our playing, coach us to play more expressively and challenged us to play with more emotion.
“The concert was a celebration of Orchestra because it's one of the first times that the full Orchestra program, 6-12, was represented in one concert. We also were inspired by ESME's duets they performed at the concert.”
