Dear Music Lover,
The New York Composers Circle is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization of composers and performers dedicated to promoting public awareness and appreciation of contemporary music through concerts, salons, and other events in the New York metropolitan area. Now in its fourteenth year, the Composers Circle offers a multifaceted program of musical activities, benefitting both the sophisticated concertgoer and the novice, both the composer and the professional performer.
One of our more significant activities is the NYCC’s Community Encores series, an outreach program in which we send professional performers to institutions throughout New York City such as schools and senior centers, at no cost to the institution, with the aim of acquainting previously untapped audiences with concert music of the 20th and 21st centuries; each concert is emceed by a representative of the group, who introduces the performers as well as the music they play.
The first concert in this series, featuring pianist/composer Nataliya Medvedovskaya with commentary by John de Clef Piñeiro (our present Chairman), took place to great audience acclaim on February 24, 2009, at the Hebrew Home in Riverdale. To date, we have presented twenty such outreach concerts, at public high schools (Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, and Hunter College High Schools) and at additional community centers (Lenox Hill Neighborhood House at Saint Peter’s Church, JASA, and the Lighthouse for the Blind). A recent Community Encores concert at Stuyvesant High School, featuring soprano Sofia Dimitrova and pianist Catherine Miller, garnered a rapt audience of 350 students, whose probing questions were fielded by the performers and by composer Richard Russell, who acted as emcee.
Several more outreach concerts are planned for this concert season; but the cost of presenting them, previously borne almost exclusively by the organization, has now become prohibitive for us, and we depend more than ever before on the sponsorship of NYCC contributors.
We are writing to ask if you would like to become a sponsor of this important project, which is bringing new music to new audiences today and helping to build the audiences of tomorrow. You can contribute any amount toward an outreach concert, which generally costs us $200, or – if you prefer – simply contribute any amount you wish toward the organization’s ongoing operating expenses.
For more information about the New York Composers Circle, and to sponsor an entire outreach concert or to make a tax deductible contribution of any amount, please visit here. In addition to detailed information about our activities, you will find a green “Donate Now” button on the main page. Just click on it, and help others derive the same pleasure from new music that you do.
Hubert Howe
Executive Director,
New York Composers Circle
