We'll be expanding our popular Summer Musical Theatre Workshop for Young People this year from two weeks to three weeks!

Responding to the needs to devote more in-depth time for our young participants to creating stories, incorporating more movement, and developing their acting technique, we're adding an additional 5 days to the program.  This will allow returning and more advanced students opportunities to work more intensively and build on the skills they've already developed. First time and beginning students will be able to build the fundamentals in a better fashion, too.

We will also be adding more instructors this year who will help meet some needs we've observed and that have been expressed by our students and their parents through our evaluation forms and in one-on-one conversations.

This will move us closer to realizing one of the foundation's core objectives -- "expanding the vision and abilities of young artists by encouraging them to learn about and experience a cross-section of artistic activities in disciplines outside their primary areas of interest". 

For more on our multi-disciplinary approach to arts education, see our ongoing blog entries, starting with this one.

For more on how our Summer Musical Theatre Workshop works, including some great photos, click here.

A never-before-performed musical work of Earl Wentz, "Ladies of the South Shore" will receive its world premiere in the Boston area this fall.

"Ladies of the South Shore" is a one-hour work for ten musicians, playing a number of different instruments, and is a collection of twelve tone poems Earl created about some of the fascinating ladies he met or worked with during his 13 seasons at the South Shore Conservatory of Music in Hingham, Massachusetts.

Full details will be released later so stay tuned and know that this is an exciting development in our work that will bring one of Earl's many wonderful musical compositions to life!

New York's Sheryl Fields, who performed in many of Earl Wentz's American Composer Series performances will help relaunch the series in 2015.  While all the details are still being finalized, let's rejoice that this incredible project created by Earl to pay tribute to America's greatest composers of popular music will not be lost.  Using the same musical arrangements, concepts, and staging created by Earl Wentz (owned by and in the care of William Watkins, Wenhelm Productions, and Sixpence, Inc.), initial performances will be for the benefit of The Earl Wentz and William Watkins Foundation, who will also co-produce the first show.

We'll be announcing the show and all the performance details in June!

Click these links for more information on The American Composer Series and to read a brief bio of Sheryl Fields (scroll on that page's menu to "The Company" link).