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JANUARY 2008

Sarah Johnson Brings New Musical Perspectives to Carnegie Hall

By Joan Baum, Ph.D.

Only eight months into her new job as Director of The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall  (WMI), Sarah Johnson, full of energy and excitement about implementing plans for the 2008-9  season—“I wish I could say more right now  but…” nonetheless, waiting for final decisions to be made, is eager at least to identify now some areas of interest. “Teaser” information  includes advancing education initiatives, moving  on strengthening community connections in  all five boroughs, as well as NJ and Westchester  County, and developing creative, skills-based and  integrated sequential curricula for grades K-12.  Future seasons will also see programs that will  bring together more educators for discussions  at Carnegie Hall and ensure that their efforts are  recognized.

On the very mid-December day Education  Update caught up with Ms. Johnson, The New  York Times announced that from September 24  to December 13, Carnegie Hall and The New  York Philharmonic will present a series of 30  concerts, film screenings, panel discussions and  other events to observe the 90th birthday of  Leonard Bernstein and the 50th anniversary of  his appointment as the orchestra’s music director.  Central in these festivities will be Marin  Alsop’s direction of student choruses performing  alongside the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, in  October, in a presentation of Bernstein’s “Mass”  at The United Palace Theater in Washington  Heights. An educational project connected with  this spectacular event, Ms. Johnson notes, will  include middle school and high school students  performing pieces they have created in response  to themes about the “Mass” and excerpts of the  “mass” at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall. 

Of course, plans for WMI also extend to renovation  of the physical layout. The studio towers,  Ms. Johnson says, will undergo renovation that  will allow WMI to bring all of its programs  under one roof, as well as provide greater opportunity  for artists to interact with students and  audiences. There will also be more rehearsal  space and practice rooms that will give greater  presence to young, emerging musicians involved  in the year-old Academy Program, a collaboration  between Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School  and WMI, in partnership with the New York City  Department of Education. What an extraordinary  association! Dedicated to serving recent postgraduate  musicians interested in arts education  and community outreach, this two-year fellowship  initiative provides recent graduates with  performance opportunities, advanced musical  training, and intensive teaching instruction and  experience. The graduates, who give performances  at Carnegie Hall and Juilliard, and at  other concert halls in NYC and NYS, hail from some of the most prestigious musical institutions  in the country, including The Curtis Institute of  Music, Eastman School of Music, New England  Conservatory, San Francisco Conservatory, Stony  Brook University, and Yale School of Music. 

While the Academy Program is a great opportunity  for these new artists-in-residence at Carnegie  Hall, it is also a boon for NYC public school  students who are able to meet Academy Fellows  coming to their school for one and a half days a  week, for 24 weeks, to work alongside school  music teachers. Here, Ms. Johnson hopes, they  will work with music and classroom teachers to  contribute to the making of a new generation of  music lovers and concert attendees, not to mention  the making of a new generation of professional  musicians who are equipped with a broad  range of skills and dedicated to creating cultural  change by inspiring a sense of the importance  of supporting classical music. Such hopes come  naturally to Ms. Johnson, who has a bachelor’s  and master’s degree in oboe from Juilliard, and  is a founding member of Ariel Winds, a quintet  dedicated to educational outreach. Before coming  to WMI, she served as Director of Education  and Community Partnerships at The Philadelphia  Orchestra and as Program Associate for educational  outreach at the 92nd Street Y, not to  mention many other related positions where she  was and continues to be a key player in education  awareness programs locally, nationally and  abroad.#    

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