More than 1,350 Sonoma State University students will be attending performances with their academic classes at the Green Music Center this fall free of charge thanks the University's Arts Integration program.
Nearly $45,000 in tickets have been reserved for academic classes at Sonoma State for performances at the Green Music Center, including Pat Metheny, the Folger Consort with Derek Jacobi, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Zakir Hussain, Itzhak Perlman, the Shanghai Acrobats and many others. "The Green Music Center exists, first and foremost, for the students. This is an effort to capitalize on this resource for educational purposes," says Scott Horstein, Arts Integration program coordinator and acting chair of the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance. "No matter what they study, we want students to have some meaningful engagement with art on campus."
The Arts Integration program aims to promote interdisciplinary learning across majors. One of the most popular performances in Weill Hall, the Folger Consort with Shakespearean actor Derek Jacobi, combines excerpts from Purcell's chamber opera "Dido and Aeneas" with a dramatic reading of Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure." The September 25 performance will see more than 400 students from theatre arts, English, music, history and criminal justice courses.
"It's letting people access a different way of thinking and experiencing as part of their liberal arts education," says Horstein.
One performance in Schroeder Hall was specifically arranged for the Arts Integration program. On November 13, German electronic music group Aggressive Loop Productions plays live accompaniment to the 1927 German silent film "Berlin - Symphony of a Great City." More than 60 percent of the tickets in the 240-seat recital hall are already reserved for classes of students studying German, music technology, and modern languages and literatures.
For some students, this will be their first time attending a performance in Weill Hall or Schroeder Hall. To introduce them to the Green Music Center, each Arts Integration performance includes a 15-minute in-class talk by Green Music Center staff to preview the concert and make students feel at home in the world-class performing arts facility.
The program includes exhibitions at the University Art Gallery and performances by the Theatre Arts and Dance and Music departments. This is the largest group to be involved with the program since its inception in 2015, says Horstein. More than 2,000 students are participating in this semester's program, double that of last semester's 1,000-student total. Faculty interested in signing up for a performance can contact Horstein at horstein@sonoma.edu.