In September of 2018, in an effort to engage more meaningfully with Mattapan residents, musiConnects posted a Request for Proposals seeking individual artist or arts and culture organization currently creating and performing in the Mattapan neighborhood who would be excited by the opportunity to collaborate with professional string musicians to create an experimental performance merging genres.
Award winning Mattapan Artist, Marjorie Saintil-Belizaire, answered the call. With extensive experience in community arts engagement and as a life-long resident of Mattapan, a collaboration between Marjorie and musiConnects was perfect.
Award winning Mattapan Artist, Marjorie Saintil-Belizaire, answered the call. With extensive experience in community arts engagement and as a life-long resident of Mattapan, a collaboration between Marjorie and musiConnects was perfect.
Over the next few months, Marjorie and musiConnects met to envision what the evening would look like. Holding the event at the Mattahunt BCYF was a natural choice as both Marjorie and musiConnects have independently held programming there and the community center is familiar to Mattapan residents.
After some fruitful visioning sessions, Marjorie and musConnects decided to create an evening of essentially instruction-less painting with our live musicians tapping into various emotions encouraged by eclectic repertoire choices. Our musicians also experimented with performing in different locations in the room. Despite that earlier paint classes by Marjorie were usually guided, the painters were excited to think about the intersection of painting and music to inspire their creativity.
By all accounts the evening was a success and provided a wonderful vehicle for Mattapan residents to spend an evening with each other, a local artist and local musicians in a creative collaboration. Stay tuned for another experiment!
After some fruitful visioning sessions, Marjorie and musConnects decided to create an evening of essentially instruction-less painting with our live musicians tapping into various emotions encouraged by eclectic repertoire choices. Our musicians also experimented with performing in different locations in the room. Despite that earlier paint classes by Marjorie were usually guided, the painters were excited to think about the intersection of painting and music to inspire their creativity.
By all accounts the evening was a success and provided a wonderful vehicle for Mattapan residents to spend an evening with each other, a local artist and local musicians in a creative collaboration. Stay tuned for another experiment!