STRINGS:
Let the Video Stream with Violinist Mark
O'Connor
by Joan Baum.
Ph.D
It isn't
the typical press conference that opens with a well-known
musician playing a toe-tapping folk waltz, but when Grammy
Award-winning violinist and composer Mark O'Connor picked
up his fiddle recently for a live webcast to help inaugurate
a new nationwide digital arts education partnership, he became “content” as
well as spokesman. An ardent supporter of arts education, O'Connor
has been for years involved with Arts4All, a leading provider
of digital arts, arts education and entertainment that was
founded by another violinist—the world famous Pinchas
Zukerman, along with the chairman of the Board of McDonalds
Restaurants (Hong Kong). In partnering with United Learning
(UL), a division of Discovery Communications, Inc. (Discovery
Channel, and more), which is an Internet-based video streaming “on
demand” or real-time delivery system (video, audio, multimedia),
Arts4All wants to ensure that audiences around the globe will
have access to an even more extensive video world of art—classes,
courses, world-class performances, archive data bases, interactive
events, including video conferencing, and live demos.
His involvement
with arts education began, O'Connor said, because he had
a hard time when he was a kid getting such an education,
though he was lucky to have supportive parents. An incredibly
busy artist, both performing and as co-founder of the international
Mark O'Connor Fiddle Camp and Strings conferences and camps
(not to mention the numerous other professional activities
that claim his attention), O'Connor sees the Arts4All/UL
alliance as an “extraordinary opportunity” to
reach schools and students in underserved areas who otherwise
would not have access to the partnership's powerful, technology-driven
offerings. The press conference conveyed the impression of
the democratic goal at the heart of the collaboration. As though
to underscore this theme, O'Connor appeared without make-up,
and even his fiddle had a slightly worn, working-class appearance,
a not inappropriate look for the founder of the newly formed
chamber ensemble, Appalachia Waltz Trio (featuring a cello
and violist as well). After all, arts for all really means,
for everyone.
Also in
attendance at the press conference was Arts4All CEO Richard
Humphrey, who said he was “thrilled” to
be working with United Learning. Arts4All, he noted, started
out as a series of master classes but with affiliations such
as UL would be expanding art resources, an area that teachers
nationwide have indicated is their number-one need. The history
of innovative educational technology shows that medium seems
to evolve faster than message. By providing original content—eleven
video programs have already been developed by Arts4All—this
partnership seeks to ensure that form follows function, and
that arts programming is not viewed as add-on. As Beth Ida
Stern, VP of United Learning points out, “students participating
in arts programs in school do better academically overall.” And
as Mark O'Connor has said many times, “I am a believer
in the inclusion of music in traditional curricula...we all
realize that technology, used properly, enriches the educational
experience tremendously.” It would appear that Arts4All
and United Learning have taken up Picasso's challenge: “Every
child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist
once he grows up.”#
See www.arts4all.com and www. Unitedlearning.com
for further information.
