​​In the Community​​

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 From our very first season we offered a portfolio of outreach events to our community, donated at no cost to our audiences and the facilities that served them.

 

We visited area nursing homes, rehab centers and multiple units at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center to play for those in the community not able to come out and hear music. Many of our wonderful audience members remembered us from year to year, and we know that our visits were also welcomed and enjoyed by the hard-working staff members at these facilities. 

 

Our outreach also included Family Programs at CSAIR from the very beginning, and in 2017 we specially re-designed these to encourage the inclusion of children with special needs from throughout the community. This interactive and informal program brought us all together in a relaxed and  sensory/autism-friendly setting to enjoy great music, involving the audience in actively exploring the music, and engaging the whole family. Many families joined us year after year, and we were delighted to meet children who were inspired by our programming to start taking instrument lessons! The opportunity for all families to really get close to live music, and to the musicians playing it, can truly inspire children’s enjoyment of and participation in music-making of all kinds for years to come.​

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With the support of our generous community, we were able to expand our outreach to children in 2017 to include annual visits to a local special-needs pre-school, where we played for small classes of excited kids who listened, clappped, sang and moved to our music. We so enjoyed working with the dedicated staff to individually tailor our programs to meet each group's special needs. We will miss the kids and their marvelous responsiveness. 

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Our heartfelt thanks to all our supporters who made these programs in the community possible.

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