As the only independent non-profit organization in the U.S. specifically dedicated to remembering the musical legacy of the Holocaust through musical performances, Music of Remembrance has a vital role to play in education. We provide a unique combination of music and history, helping to fill in in the absence of music and arts programs while giving social studies and humanities studies a human face.
MOR’s Sparks of Glory public concert series forms an integral part of our high school and college outreach program. MOR makes onsite visits to schools, working with existing class room studies concerning the Holocaust, WWII, or other related current events, and tries whenever possible to offer students a free chamber music performance as the culmination, whether at the school, through the Soundbridge center at the Seattle Symphony, or in the form of a Sparks of Glory concert. (Previously MOR partnered with Shorecrest High School, in Shoreline, Washington, in a four-year residency program co-sponsored by the Shoreline-Lake Forest Park Arts Council.)
In this way, we’re introducing chamber music to new, younger audiences and showing how music, as an expression of the human spirit, can provide a wide variety of responses to oppression and tyranny, increasing the attendance of high school and college students at MOR concerts, and widening the diversity of our audience.
In 2008-09, participants in MOR’s education and outreach events will total around 2,000, including students from Arlington High School, Ballard High School, Central Washington University, Everett Community College, Ingraham High School, The Northwest School, and Roosevelt High School. (Additionally, MOR is partnering with The Summit, a Jewish assisted living facility on First Hill, to provide live performances for senior citizens no longer able to attend concerts.)
MOR’s education and outreach is sponsored in part by the Washington State Arts Commission, King County 4Culture Arts Program, the Mayor's Office of the City of Seattle, and the Aaron Copland Fund for the Performing Arts. Sponsors for this season's Sparks of Glory include the National Endowment for the Arts, and Chamber Music America.
MOR welcomes other schools interested in collaborating to contact us.