Seattle Symphony Programs
The Seattle Symphony’s Family, School & Community Programs serve more than 100,000 people each year with 60 concerts and more than 550 classes, curricula, workshops, and lectures. A new initiative titled Family Connections is making the Symphony even more accessible to families by providing free tickets for young people to attend concerts with an already ticketed adult. In tandem with Family Connections, the Community Connections program forges partnerships with social services agencies to provide free concert tickets and programs that allow people to share arts experiences together. Family, School & Community Programs take place at Benaroya Hall and at venues throughout the community, with more than 190 schools participating in concerts and activities offered at no charge. The Seattle Symphony places special emphasis on reaching schools and neighborhoods with high concentrations of diverse, underserved, and low income populations. These programs have earned the MetLife Award for Excellence in Community Engagement and are supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Seattle Symphony engages the community through a broad variety of artistic programming to serve all tastes and preferences. These include the "Masterworks Series" featuring everything from iconic classics to new work by living composers, "Celebrate Asia" featuring music spanning East to West, "Seattle Pops Series", and the "Beyond the Score Series" where multimedia presentations and performances expand audience knowledge of symphonic music. Countless other series vary from season to season.
Recent Successes and Current Challenges
The Seattle Symphony will perform at Carnegie Hall as part of the 2014 Spring for Music festival. Spring for Music is an annual festival at Carnegie Hall designed to showcase the quality and creativity of North American orchestras. The Seattle Symphony was one of six ensembles selected from a pool of more than 60 orchestras who submitted programs for consideration. Nothing in the music world is more prized than an appearance at Carnegie Hall, and the orchestra is thrilled to be appearing there in 2014 with a program including a major new commission from Alaska-based composer John Luther Adams, that will be premiered in Seattle in June 2013.
The Seattle Symphony sees great potential for enhancing community connections, customer service and accessibility by expanding our reach through the internet, mobile devices, and other developing technology. To do this, the organization needs to invest in infrastructure upgrades including website, digital media and social media, which alongside new programming geared toward all generational and cultural segments of greater Seattle, will help build a new cross-generational, multi-cultural audience to serve all the people of the region.