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Spring For Music Has Second Life as SHIFT in Washington DC

The Kennedy Center and Washington Performing Arts announce SHIFT: A Festival of American Orchestras, a three-year festival celebrating North American orchestras which will begin in the spring of 2017.

Written By

NewMusicBox Staff

The Kennedy Center and Washington Performing Arts announce SHIFT: A Festival of American Orchestras, a three-year festival celebrating North American orchestras which will begin in the spring of 2017. The project is a reimagining of the innovative Spring for Music festival in New York that concluded its four-year run in May 2014. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a $900,000 grant for the collaboration, of which $700,000 will be leveraged as matching funds for new gifts to support the program. The festival will focus on three principal areas: performances, community events, and symposia and workshops. Additionally, there will be a community outreach component for each participating orchestra.

“We are pleased to collaborate with Washington Performing Arts and celebrate the vibrancy and potency of American orchestras in a festival setting, here in the nation’s capital,” said Kennedy Center President Deborah F. Rutter. “We are grateful to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their generous commitment to this exciting program.”

Kennedy Center

The unique institutional collaboration between the two organizations reflects a common intent to showcase the vitality and innovative spirit of American orchestras, and the further goal of sharing the celebration with the Washington, D.C. community at large.

The annual six-day music festival will present four to five orchestras per year, bringing national attention to the exemplary work of these organizations, who will be selected not only for their artistic excellence but for their relationships with their communities. The residency program will incorporate full orchestral and smaller-ensemble performances, symposia, workshops, and other events at the Kennedy Center and in smaller venues and schools throughout the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, reflecting each orchestra’s unique identity and strengths on a national platform.

“The title of the festival, SHIFT, recognizes the dynamic, evolving work and role of orchestras in the 21st century and underscores our mission to play a role in shifting pre-conceived notions about orchestras,” said President and CEO of Washington Performing Arts Jenny Bilfield. “The Kennedy Center and Washington Performing Arts share an abiding belief that the nation’s capital is the ideal place to showcase and honor the high-impact, imaginative work—on and off the stage—that our orchestras are developing for and with their audiences. How exciting for D.C. to showcase this creativity and leadership in spaces around the city!”

Spring for Music was a highly lauded annual orchestra festival that was held at Carnegie Hall in 2011 and concluded in 2014. The four-year program featured 23 orchestras performing in more than 25 concerts and was founded by arts industry leaders Mary Lou Falcone, David Foster, and Thomas W. Morris. Morris was an early proponent of the SHIFT festival in Washington.

Spring for Music provided an incredible opportunity to focus attention on the extraordinary breadth of North American orchestras and to unleash their creative energies on building excitement around creative programming,” Morris said. “When Deborah and Jenny informed me and my fellow co-founders of their idea of reconceiving the project in the nation’s capital, we were thrilled. We firmly believe that D.C. provides the perfect locale for creating a truly national focus upon America’s orchestras and the vital role they play in our society.”

More information for orchestras interested in participating in SHIFT, including a Request for Proposals, will be available on Wednesday, January 21, 2015 on the Washington Performing Arts website. Proposals are due Monday, March 2, 2015 by 5 p.m. Eastern time.

(–from the press release)