School Notes: School of Music
March/April 2007

Symposium focuses on music education in public schools

The Yale College class of ’57 has been an active supporter of music education in public schools, partnering with the School of Music to establish a successful program in the New Haven school system and working to create an endowment for its continued operation. Now the class is sponsoring an international symposium, "Music: A Child's Birthright," at the school May 30-31, coinciding with the class's 50th college reunion weekend. The symposium "will bring together international perspectives on the importance of music education in the public schools," said Paul Hawkshaw, professor of music history, and will feature music educators such as Roberta Guaspari, founder of the Opus 118 Music Center in Harlem; Wang Cizhao, president of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing; Joseph Polisi, president of the Juilliard School; and Yale School of Music dean Robert Blocker. Members of the class of ’57 were involved in the selection of school teachers from around the country who will receive awards. Honorary co-chairs of the symposium are pianist Emanuel Ax, who will play a recital for the class, and mezzo Frederica von Stade.

Taking their show on the road

Nearly 400 musicians from Yale and the New Haven community will travel to Boston April 27 to perform Benjamin Britten's War Requiem at the famed Symphony Hall. The Yale Glee Club, Yale Camerata, Yale Schola Cantorum, the Elm City Girls' Choir, and the Trinity Choir of Men and Boys will sing, accompanied by the Yale Philharmonia, under the direction of Shinik Hahm, the Philharmonia's music director. The 1962 Britten masterpiece will be paired with Toru Takemitsu's "From Me Flows What You Call Time," featuring the Yale Percussion Group. The concert will be repeated the following night back in New Haven at Woolsey Hall. Tickets for the Boston performance are available through the Symphony Hall box office, www.bso.org.