The purpose of this program is to encourage students and other citizens to pursue music as a vocation or avocation, give the community the opportunity to meet professional musicians in an "up-close and personal fashion," develop future audience, patrons and contributors for Riverside Concerts and introduce the community to a variety of musical instruments and genres. To achieve this goal Riverside Concerts engages artists-in-residence to present school-based lecture/demonstrations, community outreach mini concerts, and Capstone events. A typical residency lasts six days.
Riverside Concerts presents artists who are skilled at engaging children and the community for this program. Riverside Concerts collaborates with diverse artists, ranging from string quartets and brass quintets to folk singers and artists from other cultures, to make this program possible. It also works in partnership with the schools and community-based venues to ensure that the program is well planned and meets the needs of our various target audiences.
This general arts education nature of the program seeks to turn students and the community on to the joy music has to offer, to give them an "entry-level arts experience" and hook them. Through this program Riverside Concerts, the schools, and various community venues invest resources to develop audiences and cultivate donors for future concerts. This collaborative approach results in communicating to citizens that music is part of the stuff that makes Rochester a great community in which to work and live.
This engagement is supported by the Arts Midwest Touring Fund, a program of Arts Midwest, is generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts with additional contributions from the Minnesota State Arts Board.
Riverside Concerts is a fiscal year 2013 recipient of an Institutional Presenters/Operating Support grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is funded, in part, by the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund as appropriated by the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008.
