Repost of our First Post: First Post, Exciting Times

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Welcome to our first post. The picture’s from a recent trip to Vienna. These two little girls just popped their heads out of the window and said “Hallo”! I do the same to you. Many of you are up to speed on what’s going on so far, but let me just give you all a quick rundown on the doings. First of all, I’d like to welcome Stephen Danyew as Co-Artistic Director. Stephen’s a tremendously gifted composer who has won numerous composition prizes and has been deeply involved with education programs here in Miami. It’s an honor and privilege to have him on board as my partner. His creativity and intelligence will be a valuable asset as we try to wend our way down this new path.

Right now I’m focussed on two issues:setting real concert dates/programs and raising funds. We are working on a concert for the weekend of Nov. 17th so check your calendars to see if you have that weekend free. We have some ideas for great venues and I’m working on several others, including the ones that are hypothetically listed on the “Subscription Series” page. Stephen and I are working on business plans to enter into a competition here at UM with a large cash prize which will give us a substantial boost. If any of you has experience in fund-raising, writing business plans or knows of someone who might be interested in supporting our group please contact me.

I’ll be taking the first step in fulfilling the education portion of our mission by meeting with staff members from Creative Children Therapy on Thursday morning about starting a music program for the special needs children that they serve. They want to start an orchestra program for these kids and we’re going to get creative and see what we can do to serve these children. Again, ideas wanted!

Keep me posted on your doings. I’ll put your personal events and web pages on the “News and Events” and “Links” page so that we can connect with as many people as possible. Include links to individual events so that we can move higher up the Google rankings