Paul Bauer, director of the NIU School of Music, has accepted an invitation to serve on the festival design committee for the Chicago Young Musician Festival. The festival is a component of the Chicago Young Musician Initiative (CYMI).
The CYMI believes that making music provides essential nourishment to human development and has the power to transform lives. Music-making can be of particularly vital importance to young people who have little other opportunity for creative expression, disciplined learning or individual advancement, as they form their characters and roles in life. The power of live music is magnified when young people play together, building a musical society from their individual and collective aspirations, adding a sense of shared achievement and joy to their lives, and opening windows onto new possibilities and horizons.
CYMI is the means by which this vision of young people as musically skilled, actively engaged performers will be realized.
Tailored to current circumstances and challenges in Chicago, CYMI draws its fundamental inspiration from the Venezuelan system of youth music education (“El Sistema”) and includes regular ongoing musical exchange with faculty, conductors and students involved in “El Sistema.”
Festivals and gatherings across the city will bring together Chicago’s leading organizations in music education and performance in celebrating the musical achievements of young people. Within this context, a series of school-based community music education centers will be developed using orchestra-based music-making as the focus of a new model of teaching and learning.