Eisemann Center Receives Mid-America Arts Alliance Grant for Focus Project Collaboration with the Alexander String Quartet and the Andrew Speight Trio

RICHARDSON, TX – The Eisemann Center is among a select group of Midwest presenters chosen to receive a Mid-America Arts Alliance grants supporting the Focus Project, a collaboration of the Alexander String Quartet and the Andrew Speight Trio in partnership with the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) with a performance at the Eisemann Center on Thursday, April 12, 2007 at 8:00 pm. The Alexander String Quartet and the Andrew Speight Trio participated in a joint residency workshop at UTD on April 11, 2007, followed by a reception to meet the artists and in six additional workshops on April 11th and 12th at UTD, Richardson High School and Berkner High School. Arts education and outreach initiatives are now presented as part of the Eisemann Educates program.

These presentations are supported by Mid-America Arts Alliance with generous underwriting by the National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, and foundations, corporations and individuals throughout Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas.

By enriching communities through cultural experiences, Mid-America Arts Alliance enables individuals and families across America’s heartland to share in and to enjoy the arts and cultures of our region and the world.

The Alexander String Quartet and the Andrew Speight Trio will be engaged in seven residency activities April 11th and 12th prior to their public performance at the Eisemann Center on April 12, 2007 at 8:00 pm. The workshops are being offered as part of a unique community partnership with the UTD Arts & Humanities Department. A combined workshop and Q&A on the Focus piece will be held at the University for upper level orchestra and jazz students. Other workshops with the two groups both separate and together will be held at Richardson High School and Berkner High School. This collaboration centers around the work Focus composed by Eddie Sauter for Stan Getz in 1961. Getz commissioned Sauter to write a work for him that would bring together elements of jazz and classical music, a work, to quote Getz (from liner notes of the recording) that would “show quite clearly that the legitimacy of the past 300 years and the soul of our modern times can be put together and be beautiful.”

Mary Kennedy McCabe, Mid-America Arts Alliance Executive Director said, “The Charles W. Eisemann Center through Eisemann Center Presents is to be commended for their commitment to serving their community with these distinctive events. Audiences in the North Texas region will have the opportunity to see the exciting work of Irvin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra and the performers of the Alexander String Quartet and the Andrew Speight Trio, many for the first time, and Mid-America Arts Alliance is proud to help support this work, the Eisemann Center and Eisemann Center Presents.”