For further information about ticket availability, prices, reservation, or more information, visit the Performing Arts Series website, or contact the Goshen College Welcome Center at (574) 535-7566 or e-mail welcomecenter@goshen.edu.  The Welcome Center, located at the south end of the Union Building on the Goshen College campus, is open for business from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.Monday through Friday.

“Much of our growth has been among traditionally under-served populations. This award brings attention to these efforts, which have been possible in part because of generous community support,” said Brian Wiebe, director of the Music Center. “The award validates the work and determination of this community to see music become a positive influence for many families.”

The award recognizes the center that has grown the most in the past year. The Goshen College Community School of the Arts program has grown over 200 percent. It serves 400-450 families per semester, and includes both preschool and parent-child offerings in more than 12 public schools. The program added the most new preschools in the 2010-11 academic year, with preschool programs accounting for 75 percent of all participants.

Music Together® delivers programming in 25 countries and over 2,000 communities worldwide. Music Together® is a research-based method for developing basic music competence in children. It accomplishes this through singing and movement to songs and chants, drawing on a wide variety of cultures and styles.

“Music Together® outreach classes brings together people of different income and education levels, old and young, people of every religion and political persuasion. They all join a circle singing the same songs, feeling the same things. They become a community of like-minded people in this one activity,” said Deb Kauffman, associate director of the Music Center. “We believe that music can change the world, one child at a time.”

In Music Together®, children attend a weekly 45-minute class with a parent, grandparent or other caregiver, and receive a songbook and professional CD for home listening. Classes are taught by a trained professional and are held in various locations throughout Elkhart County.

“Because music learning supports all learning, and because it is a powerful tool for bonding, it is the perfect activity for parents to do with their children in the first years of life,” Kauffman said. “We would love to see music viewed as a birthright for every child in Elkhart County.”

Press release written by Jodi Beyeler, Goshen College Public Relations Office.

“Program keeps music in kids’s lives from an earlier age” – eTruth.com, January 17, 2011

Many people are probably skeptical when someone tells them that something has the potential to “change the world!”

This is certainly a reasonable response, with part of the skepticism being the acknowledgement that rarely is it just one thing responsible for broad change.

Never-the-less, it seems that a movement is underway in Goshen and surrounding communities that strives to offer “music as a birthright” for every child; in recent years our Community School of the Arts (CSA) has moved from affecting a few hundred students in programs held at the Music Center to reaching nearly 1,000 children weekly with activities for babies through 18-years of age held all across the county. The benefits are clear:

• Young parents are establishing patterns of “spending time” with their infants and toddlers in group classes and additional music-making in their homes
• Over 300 pre-schoolers in 18 Head Start classes are receiving the cognitive, language, physical and social benefits that come with classes in music and movement
• Elementary students in our new “Music Makers” classes are learning note-reading and ensemble skills.  They have fun, too, and one student this fall exclaimed that the class was “better than pizza!”
• Nearly 90 young singers in our “Rejoice” and “Shout for Joy” children’s choirs are blending their voices, and refining skills of habit that will someday provide leadership in their individual school choirs and in various settings throughout their lives
• Over 150 instrumentalists from grades 2-12 will participate in four different CSA orchestras this year, receiving challenges not found elsewhere and helping these students become some of the most focused learners in the county

Can you easily imagine a high percentage of these students someday graduating from high school and college? Because they experience beauty in music, do you envision these individuals approaching the world around them with love, caring and empathy? Will their persistence, learned through music, increase their capacity for ingenuity and problem solving?

Here at Goshen College, we believe the gift of music can be a powerful tool for change, and we boldly invite you to invest into Goshen College’s efforts to bring music to all members of our society. While every participant will pay something, families on free-and-reduced lunch will receive sliding scale scholarships, and families below the poverty line will continue in our “lessons for a dollar” program. Our region will grow into an “oasis” where music is experienced in full community, making our common future more secure and bright.

Please make a gift today that supports this effort to “change the world through music!”  You can send a gift to “Development, 1700 South Main Street, Goshen, IN 46526 or donate online at http://www.goshen.edu/give/Home

Thank you!

Brian Wiebe
Executive Director, Music Center

Debra Kauffman
CSA Director

Reviewer Jack Walton praised the work, which featured the South Bend Symphony, Shout for Joy, and four other area choirs.

“One bum chorus could have severely compromised the group effort,” he wrote, “but each ensemble was disciplined, tight and mellifluous. Directors Marvin Curtis, Nancy Menk, Sandy Hill, Michael Wade, and Daniel Stowe all did commendable work, bringing well-prepared choirs which turned in convincing performances.”

To read the full review in the South Bend Tribune, click here.

“Requiem for the Innocent” is a newly-commissioned musical work that is written for full orchestra and more than 200 voices, with texts in English, Spanish, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic.  It was composed “as a multi-faith prayer for society and for all victims of terrorist acts in recent years.” Shout for Joy will be the featured children’s choir participating in the new composition’s debut, along with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra, South Bend Chamber Singers, Indiana University South Bend Chorale, and the University of Notre Dame Glee Club.  Baritone Ivan Griffin is the featured soloist.

Jorge Muñiz is a noted Spanish-American composer, and Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory at the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts, Indiana University South Bend, where he also serves as Coordinator of Music and Director of Graduate Studies.  Muñiz is also adjunct composition instructor at Goshen College.  He earned his doctorate in composition at the Manhattan School of Music under principal teacher Richard Danielpour.

For tickets, please call (574) 235-9190, or visit www.morriscenter.org or www.southbendsymphony.org.