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Last month Spike Jonze captured this collaboration (already viewed more than a million times) between our artistic director Yo-Yo Ma and Memphis-style jookin' dancer Charles "Lil Buck" Riley—"The Swan," a movement from Camille Saint-Saëns' "Carnival of the Animals"—at an event in LA promoting the arts in schools. On June 7, you'll have a chance to see these two artists together live at SummerStage in Central Park, New York, in a free, public performance celebrating our own approach to integrating the arts in the classroom and beyond.
At "Night at the Caravanserai: Tales of Wonder," the Silk Road Ensemble with Yo-Yo Ma and the chamber orchestra The Knights will perform together. Tony Award-winning actor and vaudeville clown Bill Irwin (also known to children as Mr. Noodle from Sesame Street) will be the innkeeper of our caravanserai, an imaginary inn on the Silk Road where travelers are gathering for a festival of the stars. Some will include acclaimed author Jhumpa Lahiri and vocalist Bobby McFerrin, among other guest artists. You can catch Bill in Bobby's video, "Don't Worry Be Happy," below.
Of course, we'll also be shining the spotlight on the other stars of the performance: the several hundred sixth-grade students and their teachers who have been learning through the arts all year in our Silk Road Connect pilot schools:
- Edward Bleeker JHS 185 (Queens)
- Frederick Douglass Academy III (The Bronx)
- Granville T. Woods MS 584 (Brooklyn)
- PS/MS 161 Pedro Albizu Campos School (Manhattan)
Visits from teaching artists are central to our approach as we pilot this arts integration program. Visiting artists collaborate with classroom teachers to help students connect many aspects of their studies and their own lives. This week, a string quartet from The Knights is visiting each school, focusing on European classical music and what it means to be a performer—a question students are considering seriously as they prepare their own "tales of wonder" to share at SummerStage. Yo-Yo Ma also stopped in at PS/MS 161 recently, where students had a chance to tell him about the creative Silk Road journals they have been keeping. "Yo-Yo Ma is a cellist and he is very famous," reported one student. "But he loves his job because he shows interest in it and doesn't wait for questions but starts off for us and he is the one who wants to learn." Yo-Yo was particularly touched by a song they performed for him. We are so glad that the students and teachers we've partnered with this year can share the stage with us next month. "Night at the Caravanserai: Tales of Wonder" will truly be a celebration of learning through the arts. We'll tweet from the performance; follow hashtag #TalesofWonder. And if you're able to attend, we hope you'll join the conversation. For details, see our calendar. |