Bay-Atlantic
Symphony
from the Delaware Bay to the Atlantic Ocean 

Jed Gaylin, Music Director
 
59 East Commerce St., Bridgeton, NJ 08302
856-451-1169
Fax 856-451-4380
info@bayatlanticsymphony.org

Contact: Paul D. Herron
              Executive Director
              (856) 451-1169
November 12, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 

BLIND CENTER CLIENTS EXPERIENCE ADDED DIMENSIONS OF
MUSIC THROUGH BAY-ATLANTIC SYMPHONY

             The Bay-Atlantic Symphony has launched an outreach program, in collaboration with the John D. Young Memorial Lions Blind Center of Absecon, to bring classical music to clients who are visually impaired.

            The project, sponsored by the Ocean City Home Charity Foundation and Richard Stockton College, began with workshops at the Center run by lecturer and composer Paul M. Somers. These lectures were on the history and popular composers of classical music, how to enjoy a live symphony concert, as well as a live instrument demonstration by Symphony concertmaster Ruotao Mao with hands-on experience.

            “This learning experience had such a positive emotional impact on the clients,” said Ann Burns, Executive Director of the Blind Center, especially when Mao had one of the clients draw a bow over the strings of his violin. “That was an amazing moment in time for all of us,” she said.

            The culmination of the experience took place when the clients experienced the power and beauty of a full symphony orchestra at the Symphony’s concert at the Richard Stockton College on Sunday, November 4.

            The clients experienced first hand the 16-year-old Korean piano virtuoso convey the lyric beauty of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 12, and the orchestra convey the sadness of the Prelude to Act III of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata as well as the turbulence and melancholy of Franz Schubert’s “Tragic” Symphony.

“We left the concert with music in our heads and in our hearts,” said Burns.

            The Symphony is looking at this as a beginning—not only as an ongoing collaboration with the John D. Young Blind Center and as part of their continuing collaboration with the Richard Stockton College, but also to bring this program to other counties.

            “I’m most happy and gratified with the way everyone received this program and the very positive effect it had,” said Bay-Atlantic Symphony Executive Director Paul D. Herron. “We want to take it to more places and have many more people benefit from it.”