Meeting w/ CGCC CAP

Tuesday, October 3, 2006

Today we met with Mark Hart, Executive Director of the Community Arts Program at the Coral Gables Congregational Church. I’m not even sure where to start, as we talked about a myriad of exciting possibilities, and a lunch meeting turned into a 4 hour festival of ideas and excitement. First of all, we have been writing the business plan since the meeting ended, minus time for food and sleep, so that we can give Mark a draft tomorrow. He is really interested in the possibility of having Project Copernicus be "a project of the Community Arts Program at CCGC." What would that mean? Well, a laundry list of things, not the least of which would be great access to resources for concert planning, funding, and it would alleviate the need to have a board and financial structure. Donors could write checks to the Community Arts Program and they could be set aside for Project Copernicus. pC artists would act as mentors for children in the Young Musicians Orchestra, and thus the group would be ensemble-in-residence for the YMO. The benefits for pC are fantastic, and we think that the benefits for CCGC would be equally rewarding.

So, we are going to give Mark a draft of the business plan and he is going to run the idea by a few other people at CCGC to see what they think. Also, we are meeting for lunch today with Dennis Kam and Lansing McLoskey, composition professors at UM to discuss the group, as well as a new young composers competition that we fleshed out yesterday with Mark. The YMO had toyed with the idea of putting on a competition last year, and planned out all of the details, but never gave it the green light. When we started talking about possibilities and unique ideas with a young composers competition, Mark loved it and we drafted up a competition to take place this season. The theme will be a composition for string orchestra with soloists or non-traditional instruments encouraged, and the piece will embrace the Latin or African-American culture. We would like Dennis Kam to serve as chairman of the jury for the competition, so that is another exciting possibility we want to discuss with him.

Today in the afternoon we will also be meeting with Bill Hipp, dean of the music school at UM, and simply an amazing resource on the arts and a great man. He has been dean for 23 years and has a wealth of knowledge and experience that is relevant to concert planning, budgeting, marketing, etc. We are thrilled that he is willing to meet with us and give us some of his thoughts, and he has already told us that pC is "innovative," and that he looks forward to talking with us. We will be back after that with a report that I imagine will be quite exciting.