This Arts Council-funded grant supports a residency with Ensemble Galilei including Performances, master classes and other events. This project was proposed by Matthew Burtner of the McIntire Department of Music

In 2017-18, the McIntire Department of Music proposes to bring Ensemble Galilei for a residency. Founded in 1990, Ensemble Galilei is an outstanding, musically diverse group of performers exploring the common ground between folk and classical music.

The residency will consist of workshops involving students from the Baroque Orchestra, the Bluegrass groups, other UVa music ensembles, and will culminate in a concert by Ensemble Galilei in Old Cabell Hall. Approximately one hundred students will likely be impacted. We estimate that the evening concert will draw 150-300 people. The concert audience will be a mixture of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and community members. All events will be open to the public, and our intention is to forge new associations across town-gown as well as classical-folk lines. We will collaborate for the first time with the Front Porch Roots Music School, a Charlottesville institution offering instruction and concerts in a wide variety of folk and classical music.

The purpose of the residency is to open new pathways between the Music Department’s own programs devoted to these traditions, and between the rich folk and classical music scenes in the greater Charlottesville community. The residency builds on the Music Department’s continuing efforts to pioneer innovative approaches to musical performance, composition, and research, in particular the highly successful 2012 symposium, Soundscapes of Jefferson’s America, which examined the interweaving of classical and folk traditions in constituting the unique musical landscape of colonial America.

By bringing musical ensembles of this caliber to the UVA community, the McIntire Department of Music continues to cement its reputation as a cutting-edge academic music department nationally and internationally. The present proposal seeks to help students, faculty, and community members engage the often hidden connections between separate domains of modern-day music-making. The success of the residency will be based on the quality of the interactions with the UVA academic community (undergraduate, graduate students, and faculty) and beyond.

Check back for more information on this Arts Council-funded project’s unfolding timeline.

The Arts Council provides advocacy, advice, and support in the Arts at the University of Virginia. It strives to develop and strengthen the bonds of interest and participation among the Arts Departments, their associated programs,  and their alumni and friends; to advocate on their behalf; to advise and assist with communications; and to help raise funds in support of academic programs, facilities, and special events. Among its multitude of arts advocacy efforts, the Council awards annual Arts Council Grants. These grants have, and continue to play an instrumental role in a number of  residencies, workshops, project and research-based endeavors proposed across Arts Grounds annually. This series of articles will highlight each funded project and serve to inform the UVA community of their unique timelines, progress and outcome reports.