John S. and James Knight Foundation and business leader Adrienne Arsht give generously to University of Miami to increase community access to the arts
CORAL GABLES, FL (November 29, 2010) — The University of Miami Frost School of Music’s Henry Mancini Institute was awarded $500,000 by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in conjunction with the 2010 Knight Arts Challenge. This award will be used to produce “HMI: Outbound,” a new community outreach program to engender a new cultural niche in South Florida, a cross-genre orchestra, i.e., an orchestra that merges classical, jazz, world and pop music to create new musical outcomes. The creation of the dynamic HMI outreach program will bring accessible and exciting film and chamber music to Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens and other community venues, plus genre-bending school concerts to teach just how “cool” and relevant great music is.
The Knight Foundation grant has been matched with a generous $500,000 cash contribution by philanthropist, business leader and UM trustee Adrienne Arsht, bringing total new funding for the HMI: Outbound program to $1,000,000.
The Knight Foundation grant combined with Adrienne Arsht’s donation will also help bring special guest artists to HMI outreach performances and help scholarship new “Mancini Fellows” to participate in the Institute.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Knight Arts Challenge is a five-year, $40 million initiative to bring South Florida together through the arts. Ms. Arsht, the naming donor for the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami Dade County, is a trustee of the University of Miami.
“By bringing performers out of the concert halls and into our everyday lives, we’re reminded about just how enriching and engaging the arts can be,” said Dennis Scholl, Knight Foundation’s vice president/arts. “Add the genre-bending line-up, and the Outbound program will be a wonderful way to expose new audiences to great music.”
Shelton G. Berg became the dean of the UM Frost School of Music in 2007, and soon after attracted the esteemed Henry Mancini Institute (HMI) with its rich history of groundbreaking musical and multimedia activities to become a year-round institute within the School. Dean Berg and HMI are attracting a unique cohort of stellar multi-genre performers to the South Florida region, who will transform the arts and increase access to music through collaborations with remarkable guest artists and film composers in community concert experiences, under the direction of HMI resident conductor, Scott Flavin.
The Frost HMI Orchestra has already performed for HBO and PBS specials, a major record label, and is the resident ensemble of the Arsht Center’s JazzRoots Series produced by Larry Rosen. The Henry Mancini Institute’s growing popularity in South Florida and its youthful zeal makes an ideal pairing for attracting new audiences to its live music and multimedia productions and creating a new musical niche in the region.
###
About the Frost School of Music
The Phillip and Patricia Frost School of Music is a world-class music institution with 100 faculty members and 700 students located on the Coral Gables campus of the University of Miami. The mission of the Frost School of Music is to foster musical leadership by providing an innovative, relevant, and inspiring education; advance performance, creativity and scholarship; and enrich the world community with meaningful outreach and brilliant cultural offerings. The Frost School is the exclusive home of the Henry Mancini Institute which provides students with cross-genre performance opportunities in real-world professional settings, and the Bruce Hornsby Creative American Music Program which develops the creative skills of talented young artist/songwriters by immersing them in the diverse traditions of American songwriting. For more information, visit http://www.music.miami.edu.
About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation advances journalism in the digital age and invests in the vitality of communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Knight Foundation focuses on projects that promote informed and engaged communities and lead to transformational change. For more, visit http://www.knightfoundation.org.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Elizabeth Amore
305-284-5500
eamore@miami.edu
