New Orchestra Outreach > Concert Curriculum > For Orchestras > For the Community > For Schools > Concert > Curriculum > History > Accolades > How to Participate

"We have never had concerts that integrate children's and professionals' talents to this degree, or that engage large audiences of young people in quite this fashion. This is outreach at its very best!"

- Susan Tilley, Regional Arts Administrator, Kravis Center for the Performing Arts

Opening the doors of the orchestra opens the doors of the concert hall.

With young people participating in, rather than simply attending, concerts, New Orchestra Outreach expands traditional models of presentation in ways that concert-goers value.

New Orchestra Outreach is all about opening doors – from opening the doors of the orchestra to young people, to opening the doors of the concert hall to a larger, more diverse audience. It opens the doors of the stage to a broader variety of styles and genres, and opens the doors of supporters who value the powerful arts-learning experience orchestras with doors wide open are able to provide.

For young people who have walked through the doors, the discipline of rehearsal, and the exultation of performance, are powerful, life-changing experiences. In turn, young people on stage open doors for those in the audience: a chorus of “regular kids” performing with an orchestra serves as a powerful surrogate for those in the audience who, recognizing their own on stage, are drawn in.

Doors open for the orchestra as well. New Orchestra Outreach resonates with the public and enables orchestras to make a genuine impact in, and fortify ties to, their communities; produce popular, high-profile, concerts; increase media attention; raise public profile; expand their audience; improve morale; and enhance their ability to raise funds.

A 2002 report published by Audience Insight entitled “Classical Music Consumer Segmentation Study: How Americans Relate to Classical Music and Their Local Orchestras” offers solutions to the dilemmas facing a field “increasingly detached from its potential customers.” The report represents the most comprehensive discipline-specific audience study ever undertaken in the U.S., and culminates a decade-long initiative to spark innovative ways of strengthening relationships between orchestras and their audiences.

New Orchestra Outreach Applied

RIME's Concert Curriculum is a practical application of New Orchestra Outreach, and embodies many of the research-supported solutions determined by Audience Insight. Indeed, in an evaluation of the field published in the National Arts Journalism Program Journal of Columbia University, author Gwendolyn Freed concludes that An Orchestra's Guide To The Young Person (the title of the concert that culminates the Concert Curriculum) is “the most exciting thing going on in children’s programming,” and “would have kids begging their parents for a chance to go to the symphony."

Read the article in the NAJP Journal (pdf file) >>

Read the report by Audience Insight >>

Learn more about the Concert Curriculum >>