Meeting with Arts at St. Johns

Chung had a great meeting with Carol Hoffman-Guzman if Arts-at-St. Johns (http://www.stjohnsmiamibeach.com) today. He worked to firm up the January date for a concert in their beautiful sanctuary and discussed the possibility of future collaborations. They have an incredibly eclectic and varied program over there, with classes in everything from belly dancing to acting, as well as fantastic musical offerings. We would be a great fit for this program, and we'd help to further their mission statement, which is:

To encourage, present and provide a forum for all forms of the arts, with a special emphasis on the diverse traditions of our communities in South Florida and also on the newly emerging art forms that represent the blending of cultures, races, beliefs, and ethnicities in our global community. To encourage the arts as a medium for bringing social, spiritual and personal healing, transformation and reconciliation.

It's a wonderful, beautiful mission - a worthwhile thing to strive for, and strikingly similar to what we've laid out in our own business plan.

In other news:

We will be starting with Creative Children's Therapy next week, working on a Christmas program. We're not sure what to expect as we've never worked with developmentally disabled children before, but whatever happens, we're certain that this will be a life changing experience.

We're still waiting on finalizing our logo. Chung thought the top one looked too much like it had pine trees growing out of it, and the bottom one is great but too complicated for everyday use. Steve thought that those actually were pine trees (yikes!). LL Bean is not what we're after but we thought that the general idea was fantastic. A few small changes and we should be on our way.

The Starbucks thing will have to remain a mystery for the time being, but I can tell you that we are working to make a recording that benefits an organization you've heard about quite a bit lately. We're also working on concerts in the New New York Times Building in Manhattan.

So. The latest on concerts:

Program: Danyew, Soft Wind, Work for Tenor and Chamber Ensemble TBA and Mahler/Stein/Platt Symphony No. 4
Dates for the cycle: January 16-21
Venues: Coral Gables Congregational Church and St. Johns on the Lake

Pretty firm, but still waiting to hear for sure from the venues. We'd like to add a venue in Palm Beach County or Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood) and we'll look for one as soon as we hear back from CGCC and St. John's.

We're starting to put a press kit together. Let us know if you'd like to see one and we'll send it right off. It would be great to get some opinions on it.

That's all for now.