New Partnership with DePauw School of Music, Eskenazi Health in Indianapolis

New Amsterdam Presents, the DePauw School of Music, and the Marianne Tobias Music Program at Eskenazi Health are pleased to announce a new unique partnership that will bring contemporary music in the Indianapolis region to the widest possible audience.

The three organizations - an institution of higher education, a music series in a public health care system, and a new music artists' service organization - will coordinate their resources to increase the impact of visiting musicians, create new opportunities for local artists, and provide numerous points of access for audiences in a variety of locations.

"Increased coordination between institutions will provide greater opportunities for both artists and presenters," said Judd Greenstein, composer and co-director of New Amsterdam Presents. "By sharing ideas and resources among different organizations early in the planning stages, we will offer a greater capacity for artists to reach multiple audiences and have a substantially greater community impact, with greater efficiency for the organizations themselves."

This new partnership intersects with new programs in each of the three institutions. DePauw recently launched the "21st Century Musician Initiative," a school-wide effort to help prepare musicians for the realities of today's musical world. Mark McCoy, Dean of the DePauw School of Music, described the program as "a complete re-imagining of the skills, tools and experiences necessary to create musicians of the future instead of the past-flexible, entrepreneurial musicians that find diverse musical venues and outlets in addition to traditional performance spaces, develop new audiences and utilize their music innovatively to impact and strengthen communities."

As part of this initiative, DePauw plays host to contemporary music ensembles that reflect, in their own practice, the values and skills that are being learned by the student body. On September 6, the Grammy-winning vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth will visit DePauw on the Green Guest Artist series; their recent rise to global acclaim, which included a performance at the Grammy ceremony and a Pulitzer Prize for composer-member Caroline Shaw (for her Partita, written for and performed by the ensemble), makes them an ideal example of how a self-developed new music project can have an enormous impact.

Roomful of Teeth is an artist on the roster of New Amsterdam Presents, whose subsidiary label, New Amsterdam Records, also released Roomful of Teeth's debut recording. In the coming season, New Amsterdam is embarking on an ambitious new programming model, of which Indianapolis is the first example, emphasizing "regional hubs" that can share resources to create new opportunities for visiting ensembles and a greater sense of partnership among neighboring institutions.

"Indianapolis has a wonderful musical community that can serve as a model for what we're trying to achieve around the country," said Greenstein. "We intend for this to be the first of many such partnerships to come."

Anticipating this formal partnership, Eskenazi Health commissioned a new work from Shaw for the Indianapolis Children's Choir last February, partnering with New Amsterdam Presents to debut the work on a series presented by the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. Eskenazi Health, which has provided high-quality, cost-effective, patient-centered health care to the residents of Marion County and Central Indiana for 155 years, recently founded the Marianne Tobias Music Program at Eskenazi Health, welcoming artists of diverse genres to the Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital and Eskenazi Health campus, exposing patients, families and staff to a wide range of musical experiences.

"Not only do the arts enhance the health and vitality of our community," said Dr. Lisa Harris, chief executive officer for Eskenazi Health, "but research has also demonstrated the importance of the arts in health outcomes. That's why art in its various forms is central to our model of health and healing."

For more information about New Amsterdam's partnering organizations, please visit:

www.DePauw.edu/music/21cm/

www.eskenazihealthfoundation.org/where-to-give/music-therapy/

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