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| Jane Monheit at Usdan Center  Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, America's premier summer arts day camp, will celebrate its 40th Anniversary Season with its 40th Gala Concert on Wednesday August 1 from 5:00 PM to 8:30 PM. The season opened on June 25, with a concert by Dr. Billy Taylor, coming out of retirement and performing with his trio for the occasion. Celebrated jazz singer and former Usdanite Jane Monheit, an alumna of the Center, will be the featured artist at Usdan's 40th Anniversary Gala. Monheit has returned to her former summer home to perform for Usdan students many times.She was the recipient of Usdan's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, and she will join Executive Director, Dale Lewis, in presenting 2007 awards to other alumni. Previous Lifetime Achievement Award-winners have included Academy Award-winning actress Ellen Burstyn, arts philanthropist Mrs. Avery Fisher, Agnes Gund, President Emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, Betty Allen, the opera star and former President of the Harlem School of the Arts, acclaimed humorist, author and radio host Al Franken, award-winning jazz musician Jimmy Heath, and America's great jazz artist and educator Dr. Billy Taylor. The Gala will take place at the 1,000-seat McKinley Amphitheater on Usdan's 200-acre woodland campus in Wheatley Heights (Huntington) Long Island. Usdan has been hailed by Time Magazine as “One of America's most unique camps,” and the Gala Concert will feature performances by students from the music, theater and dance departments, visual arts exhibits, with Lifetime and Alumni Achievement Awards presented to accomplished alumni and special guests. Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts, America's largest summer arts day camp, was formed to introduce young people, ages 6 to 18, to the arts through performance and study with a professional faculty of artist-teachers. The Center's mission is to provide children with the arts as a companion for life through great teaching, and the camaraderie of fellow students who share a love the arts. Usdan offers more than 40 programs in music, dance, theatre, visual arts, chess, video art and computer graphics, creative writing, and nature and ecology. No audition is required for most Usdan programs, and one-third of the Center's 1,600 students attend on scholarship. Children commute to Usdan five days a week on air-conditioned bueses that leave from most New York metropolitan area neighborhoods. A special feature of the students' daily program is the Center's series of Festival Concerts, daily educational performances by distinguished artists, such as the Tokyo String Quartet, the Limon Dance Company, violinist Rachel Lee, and cast members of current Broadway shows. Although the Center's goal is to encourage arts participation, Usdan's unique program has inspired many former students to go on to professional careers. Alumni include actors Natalie Portman, Lisa Gay Hamilton (featured in Broadway's Gem of the Ocean) and Jordan Leeds (I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change), singers Mariah Carey and Jane Monheit, and members of the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and numerous ballet companies including Pacific Northwest, Ballet San Jose, American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet. write your comments about the article :: © 2007 Jazz News :: home page |