Sarasa Chamber Music Ensemble

Sarasa News:

Our tenth anniversary concert season (2008-2009) was a great success. Highlights were performances of Pergolesi’s “Stabat Mater” in Cambridge, on the Boston Early Music Festival Series, and in New York City, on the Morgan Library and Museum Series. Our upcoming season offers a wide variety of instrumental chamber music and promises to be an exciting one.

Many of you are aware of how important our work with incarcerated teenagers is to me, to the Sarasa musicians, and to the kids and staff at the facilities we visit. But we always feel that it is not enough. How often we get feedback like this: “ The only request I have is for you guys to come back because I think all the residents and staff enjoyed the performances and other activities as well.” ( Willgen, a resident at Worcester Secure Treatment)

We are trying to address this in several ways. We hope to raise enough funds to experiment with a more ongoing relationship in an expanded residency at one facility, where we will focus on group singing and percussion in the course of eight visits instead of the current three. Of course this will only benefit a small number of teenagers- but perhaps in life-changing ways! Willgen also had this to say: “ Being in DYS for a long time, I have never seen a group or somebody to take their time to perform and let us participate in a musical activity”.

You can’t imagine how even a one-hour performance by a visiting group lifts the spirits and opens the eyes of these teenagers. We also want to bring many more accomplished young musicians, under the umbrella of Sarasa, into these facilities, as we did on a small scale last season. Students from the New England Conservatory Opera Workshop performed opera excerpts in a Dorchester facility. By the time we left, the surly, cynical, hopeless attitude of the guys had been replaced by such a buzz of excitement and hand-shaking all around that you knew it would give them something to talk about and think about for several days.

Sarasa is very lucky to have received funding from the Amelia Peabody Foundation and the Kalliopeia Foundation for outreach residencies and concerts, and from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for organizational support. But the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services runs 96 programs. Bringing music into these facilities is not a DYS priority even though most of the kids live for their music. Perhaps you could help Sarasa with a donation so we can bring more music to more kids.

Thanks so much for your past generosity and support of Sarasa. I look forward to seeing you at our concerts and hope you will bring some friends along! –Timothy Merton