Toward a Living Art

                  Toward a Living Art is a free education program offered by Canada's only full-sized new music orchestra. Toward a Living Art has been the backbone of Esprit's youth-oriented activity almost since the orchestra began. The program enables Canada's youth to explore musical creativity as a living art by bringing them together with professional composers and performers.

                  The program encourages young people to be inquisitive, to explore and to develop an early interest in the new forms of today's music. Toward a Living Art builds appreciative future audiences and promotes the enjoyment of new music alongside a demand for excellence in composition and performance, inspiring tomorrow's young artists today. It has served thousands of young people, both musicians and non-musicians, to date.

                  Toward a Living Art. . .

• guides young people through familiar and challenging new music terrain in a comprehensive, enjoyable way;
• places strong emphasis on Canada's orchestral musical identity;
• gives youth the rare opportunity to meet and interact with leading Canadian composers, performers and artists; and
• opens the orchestra's rehearsals to students/young people.

                  

Through Toward a Living Art, children and adolescents in the Greater Toronto Area are able to enjoy, free of charge, Esprit Orchestra's school concerts, meet-the-orchestra sessions and question-and-answer lectures with composers. In-class visits, open rehearsals, free/subsidized concert tickets to Esprit's regular season concerts, student concerts presented in schools, workshops, student performances, artist lectures and seminars - Toward a Living Art offers something for everyone.

                   The program also offers student performers and composers the chance to get directly involved with Esprit players, 'sitting in' at rehearsals and public concerts and/or having their compositions performed.

                  Toward a Living Art provides a direct and ongoing connection between Esprit's artists and children. A strong mentoring element emerges as projects come to fruition. Children of many age groups, cultural backgrounds and musical abilities can participate, including students in general studies not directly involved with, or specializing in, music.

                  Toward a Living Art. . .

• offers a behind-the-scenes perspective on the process of creating and performing contemporary classical music;
• offers select student composers the opportunity to hear their pieces performed by Esprit, and offers student performers the chance to perform alongside Esprit players ('sitting in' at rehearsals and concerts);
• presents lectures/demonstrations in schools; and
• presents in-school concerts & run-outs to communities outside the GTA.

                  Through composition, musical performances and music appreciation projects, Toward a Living Art participants of all ages are exposed to the vitality and diversity of today's global musical mosaic. Esprit's education program is designed specifically to guide young people through both familiar and more challenging musical terrain in a comprehensive and enjoyable way and to give young people rare access to the process of creating and performing contemporary classical music. All aspects of Esprit's Toward a Living Art program are free of charge to junior, middle and high school students in the Greater Toronto Area.

                  

A number of composition and performance projects involving high school composition and performance students will be initiated during Esprit's 2003/04 Concert Season. Students will work with Esprit throughout the coming season to bring their compositions and performance projects to fruition for performance at Esprit's Weekend, New Wave Composers Festival.