One of Michigan’s unparalleled educational treasures is celebrating a milestone. The wellspring of countless influential actors, musicians, authors and artists, Interlochen Arts Academy is celebrating 50 years of providing a singular educational environment to nurture artistic excellence.
Marking the occasion is a 50th Anniversary national concert tour featuring the Interlochen Arts Academy Orchestra, Band and Choir. In addition to dates in New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., a Detroit performance takes place at the Max M. Fisher Music Center on Thursday, March 22 at 7 p.m. The event is free to the public and seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis.
The program on the Orchestra Hall stage will feature some bold selections including “Asphalt Cocktail” by composer John Mackey, an orchestral ode to Detroit techno titled “Warehouse Medicine,” and the a capella choral work “Past Life Melodies” by Sarah Hopkins. Joining the orchestra for the Dvorak Romance, Op. 11, will be Academy alumna Jorja Fleezanis, professor of violin and Henry A. Upper Chair in Orchestral Studies at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and former Concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra. Joining the band for the Recitative and Polacca from the Von Weber concerto for clarinet, will be Academy alumnus clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein, an Avery Fisher Career prizewinner and professor of clarinet at the University of Minnesota.
Founded in 1962, the Arts Academy was the first arts high school in the United States. At the time, it was a revolutionary idea that the arts could play such a central role in education. Today, the school has produced dozens of Grammy-winners, “MacArthur Geniuses,” best-selling authors and more Presidential Scholars than any other school in the country: 41. The school has been recognized as a national leader in the arts, receiving the National Medal of Arts in 2006, the nation’s highest honor for an arts organization.
For more information call (313) 576-5111 or visit www.detroitsymphony.com.