Arts Activities Support
ACHF Arts Access
Ensemble 61 will present The French Connection, a concert slated for February or March 2014 at Aria (the former Jeune Lune space) in downtown Minneapolis, featuring work by late-20th century French composers, paired with early-21st century work by American composers that they inspired… including a new piece by Ensemble 61 co-founder Kirsten Broberg. The French Connection will introduce audiences to a rarely-programmed musical style known as spectral music, pioneered in the early 1970s by two French composers featured on our program. In addition to our evening concert, open to the general pubic, we will program a daytime school show, especially reaching out to students at these French Immersion schools: L’Etoile du Nord in St Paul, Pierre Bottineau in Minneapolis, Normandale Elementary in Edina, and The French Academy of Minnesota in St Louis Park.To evaluate our project’s success, Ensemble 61 and Board members will meet after the concerts to review the artistic merits of the performance. We will also meet with other performers and composers who attended the concert and ask for candid feedback about both the choice of programming and the performance itself. We will definitely get immediate feedback from our student audience – yays and nays, what was cool, what was different – and from the educators who attend with them, looking for comments about our effectiveness in presenting the work, making it accessible, and organizing the event. We’ll provide a survey for the audience, and capture valuable anecdotal responses during our after--show talk and reception. We also evaluate our financial success, balancing costs and income against our budget, and assessing our programming in the context of our long- range plan.
Our concert featured rarely-programmed French music, a world premiere by Kristen Broberg, and a 1991 work by local composer Mary Ellen Childs; We also presented a successful performance to 75 students from French immersion schools; We reached our target audience and we were thrilled that a group of 21 college students; We are beginning a long-range planning process and re-assessment of our organization and we will use the outcomes from this event as valuable experience to feed into our Long Range Plan; For the first time we undertook a modest but important individual campaign through Give Minnesota and achieved our goal in less than 10 days’ time.
Other, local or private