Welcome to our December Newsletter!
As the holiday season swoops swiftly upon us, Sarasa would like to thank all of you for making 2024 a year to remember, in your support both for our public concerts and our programming with incarcerated teenagers.
Photo credit @Chung Cheng
Music unlocked:
In 2024, Sarasa brought more outreach presentations and residencies to youth in detention centers in Eastern Massachusetts than ever before through our Music Unlocked program. Thanks to a Challenge America matching grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a special angel, the McKenzie Family Charitable Trust, the Otto & Marianne Wolman Foundation, and many donors like you, Sarasa has been able to continue its deep-rooted mission of sharing music with those who have repeatedly faced an unfair system, or had a troubled start in their young lives, and sadly find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time — and on the wrong side of the law.
In July 2024, when we visited a Department of Youth Services facility in Dorchester, one of the teens was kept in his cell for bad behavior. However, he desperately wanted to participate and sing with the rest of the group. One of his peers held up the printed lyrics outside his locked cell window so he could sing along with everyone. The young man sang with all his might. It literally took our breath away — and was an amazing moment to witness.
This year stands out especially because we were able to bring music for the first time to inmates in an adult male prison in Shirley, Massachusetts. This was due to the sheer determination from a formidable advocate for Sarasa’s musical outreach in the prison systems, Cynthia Gardner. The men we met at MCI-Shirley, whose ages ranged from early twenties to mid-eighties, were extraordinary. Despite the starkness of the surroundings, and the monotony of the drab grey jumpsuit each inmate had to wear, the humanity of their faces stood out. Every type of face was so individual, and so full of character. There was also a glow that emanated from each of them. In that room, we all immediately felt how the power of music touched each person’s soul and brought everything from comfort, to attentiveness, to smiles, to nodding, to dreaminess, and, dare we say, nostalgia.
One inmate asked if we could play “Ave Maria,” and immediately Ute Gfrerer (our soprano) and Daniel Padgett (our keyboard player) launched into Schubert’s soothing aria. The beatific smile on that man’s face is something I think those of us present will never forget. For a moment, his world was not barren, but full of beauty and meaning. At the end of our 90-minute session, another gentleman commented, “I’ve been here for 25 years, and I’ve never experienced anything like this.”
We are planning to visit MCI-Framingham women’s prison in January, and hope live music can once again unlock a moment of release from these men's very stark reality.
FEEDBACk from teen residents at Windsor Hill Academy for Girls in Clinton, MA (July 2024)
FEEDBACK from teen residents and staff members at Sharp Revocation for Boys in Worcester, MA (November 2024)
Teens:
Staff:
Help Sarasa continue this vital work. Click here to donate!
Start the new year with sarasa!
Sarasa begins the New Year in 2025 with a virtual rainbow of colors for our January concert-set, performing string quartets by a youthful Haydn and the rarely heard Pavel Vranicky (whom Haydn and Beethoven especially favoured as conductor for their symphonic and choral works), as well as a string quintet by one of Sarasa's much loved composers for the cello, Luigi Boccherini. Led by the inimitable Elizabeth Blumenstock, you can purchase tickets now and save!
Color Burst
Warmth, beauty, humour, and pathos from Haydn and Boccherini, including rarely-heard music by 18th-century Moravian composer Pavel Vranicky, adding to a bursting palette of colors in this program for string quartet and quintet.
With Elizabeth Blumenstock, Jesse Irons, violins; Jason Fisher, viola; Timothy Merton, Jennifer Morsches, cellos
Friday, January 10, 2025 at 7pm - Brattleboro Music Center, Brattleboro (tickets at www.bmcvt.org)
Saturday, January 11, 2025 at 7pm - Friends Meeting House, Cambridge (on sale here!)
Sunday, January 12, 2025 at 3:30pm - Follen Community Church, Lexington (on sale here!)
Psst, Don’t forget!
The Arthur Rackham Fairy Book, 1933
It’s not too late to catch the streaming of our thrilling November concert-set, East ~ West! Works by Vivaldi, Bartók, Kodály, Lully, Rameau, Biber & Ali Ufkî Bey
“[The] concert was a knockout. The playing was out of this world.”
“I don't know when I have gotten such pure pleasure from a musical performance.”
-Audience reactions
