“Bringing innovative programming and acclaimed art education to the borough of the Bronx”
—Bronxnet
Bronx Arts Ensemble announces 2018-19 season with focus on music from Mexico;
Continues to partner with schools across the Bronx to provide multidisciplinary arts education
The Bronx Arts Ensemble has announced its 2018-19 concert season, highlighting the music of Mexico. These concerts continue the ensemble’s commitment to presenting excellent performances in a variety of musical styles, representing favorite repertoire from many genres as well as giving Bronx residents the opportunity to hear new music they might not otherwise encounter. At a moment when Latin American immigrants are being marginalized, BAE hopes to display some of the range and beauty of Mexican culture.
The season opens with a program juxtaposing works by Mexican composers Manuel Ponce and Leonardo Velázquez with music by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The following month, pianist-arranger and longtime BAE collaborator Pablo Zinger performs his version of the Great Mexican Songbook at Belmont’s Mount Carmel Church, leading three singers in his arrangements of “Estrellita,” “Bésame Mucho,” and many others. In a winter salon, Bronx resident and cellist Sophie Shao and other BAE players perform works by Mexicans Manuel Ponce and Carlos Chavez, paired with Dvořák’s Piano Trio in F minor, while in the spring, traditional Mexican song and dance troop Radio Jarocho brings to BAAD! (the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance) music and movement from the countryside of Veracruz, Mexico.
Other concerts deepen fruitful artistic relationships with Manhattan Brass, jazz bassist Mary Ann McSweeney, and Cuban-Bronx pianist Elio Villafranca. BAE also welcomes Metropolitan Opera trombonist Weston Sprott to one of its salons for the first time. The 2018-19 season additionally presents solo performances by pianists Daniel Mori and Kelvin Rojas, the co-winners of the BAE 2018 Bill Scribner Young Artist Competition.
BAE also celebrates 25 years of providing arts education programs to public schools throughout the Bronx. In 2017-18 alone, the organization provided arts courses to 4,800 kindergarten through high school students at 45 schools, offering 45 different unique courses across the four major art disciplines of music, movement, theater, and visual arts. During that academic year, BAE teaching artists gave 14,500 class sessions.
In addition, BAE continues its partnership with the Center for Arts Education Research at Teachers College, Columbia University, which developed a new curriculum framework last school year for movement or dance teaching artists, which will be put into place during this school year. The framework is based on effective teaching of the arts, based on the NY
Department of Education Blueprint; the incorporation of diversity, equity, and inclusion, based on standards established by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and creativity and critical thinking standards established by the Partnership for 21st Century Learning.