Rising Stars in...Education

Jamie Andrews
Director, Community Education, Minnesota Opera

A drummer with a passion for opera, Jamie Andrews, who spent his post-college years as a public school music teacher, joined the Minnesota Opera in 2002 at a moment when the company was rethinking its education program, looking in particular to engage secondary school students. Andrews accordingly built the company’s small girls’ choir program into the three-tiered, co-ed Project Opera: an ensemble of 25 children with unchanged voices, an ensemble of 60–75 teens, and a handful of apprentices drawn from the teen ensemble, all of whom learn about opera from the inside, by performing it. Last season, Project Opera produced its first commissioned work, The Giver, based on the popular young adult novel by Lois Lowry.

This is a change from what Andrews calls “drive-by arts education,” substituting depth (weekly sessions during which the kids work on musical and performance skills) for breadth (in-school “exposure” visits by opera singers). “We are working with fewer kids much more intensely,” he says. “Arts-going is a habit, something you do over and over. Giving one fourth-grader three experiences of opera won’t make him or her into an arts-goer. We don’t reach as many kids, but what comes from it is a quality music education, and a chance to work with a professional staff. Also, these kids and their families become a part of the Minnesota Opera family.”

Conceived and fully realized by Andrews, The Giver, a cocommission with Lyric Opera of Kansas City, fits naturally within Minnesota’s interest in commissioning and performing new work. “We wanted to show kids that opera is alive and real, composed by real people,” says Andrews. “This was a story they knew, a book written at a serious level for adolescents, which was turned into an art work for them to perform for other kids.” The success of the project was borne out by its popularity: all eight performances, including two for school audiences, sold out.

Next in this Category