November 16, 2005 -

OTTAWA, CANADA -- Over a three-year period beginning in January 2006, three teaching musicians in Saskatchewan will lead music classes for students in Grades 4-6, as well as clinics for elementary school teachers, thanks to the National Arts Centre’s Music Ambassador Programme.

The new music education programme will target a total of 300 elementary schools in mainly rural areas in both Alberta and Saskatchewan over the next three years. Three other teaching musicians in Alberta will run the programme in that province.

 “This programme is about the NAC’s long-term commitment to supporting music education in Canadian schools,” said Claire Speed, the NAC’s director of music education. “The teaching musicians are all superb orchestral players and enthusiastic educators who are so looking forward to making classical music accessible to young people in schools throughout Alberta and Saskatchewan.”

The teaching musicians will use a teacher resource kit called Vivaldi and the Four Seasons that the NAC developed with curriculum experts and distributed to every elementary school in Alberta and Saskatchewan. The NAC also distributed instructional resource units designed by University of Alberta’s Dr. Robert de Frece, a professor of music and music education, and Janie Fries, a teacher who has been actively involved with the recent renewal of Saskatchewan’s arts education curriculum.

All three musicians have strong ties to both the Regina Symphony Orchestra and the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra, ensuring the Music Ambassador Programme will have strong links with those orchestras and their music education programmes. Each musician will meet with orchestra management to hear directly about how they might connect the orchestras in their teaching.

“Music is an integral part of Saskatchewan communities, and the NAC Music Ambassador Programme will enable students to learn more about musicians in and from their province, and how music is a fluid communication linking the past and the present in our communities,” said Lisa Simmermon, one of the Music Ambassador Programme’s three teaching musicians.

The Saskatchewan teaching musicians, who each have an impressive range of musical and educational experience, are:

• Sally Cochrane, a flutist from Saskatoon. Cochrane has played with the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra since 1983. She has also served the SSO in an administrative capacity as artistic administrator and personnel manager. Her extensive classroom teaching experience includes teaching music from Kindergarten to Grade 12 at  two French schools.

• Lisa Simmermon, principal timpanist with the Regina Symphony Orchestra. Simmermon teaches privately, is a home-school teacher, past president of Autism Society Canada, and was an extra percussionist and substitute timpanist with NACO (1979-1983).

• Brian Johnson, principal second violin with the Regina Symphony Orchestra. Johnson teaches for the Regina Public Schools after-school elementary music programme and the Regina Conservatory. He is the senior violin instructor and orchestra director of the Moose Jaw Youth String Orchestra, and is also a bowmaker. 

The National Arts Centre plays a national role in education and community outreach, and in the use of new technology to reach Canadians from coast to coast. The NAC Orchestra’s performance and education tour of Alberta and Saskatchewan, taking place from Nov. 7-19, includes over 90 educational events.

The tour will see orchestra members visit Regina, Melville, Prince Albert, Humboldt and Saskatoon, SK. Alberta events include stops in Grande Prairie, Medicine Hat, Calgary, Edmonton, Spruce Grove, Stony Plain, Banff, Red Deer and Lethbridge.

The NAC Orchestra Alberta-Saskatchewan Tour is supported by Alberta Presenting Sponsor EPCOR and Saskatchewan Presenting Sponsor CN, with additional Major Support in Alberta from CN.  Bell is the Technology Sponsor in Alberta. The Tour’s Education Sponsors are ConocoPhillips in Alberta and SaskEnergy in Saskatchewan. True Energy Inc. is the Saskatchewan Community Sponsor. Special funding for the Tour’s education programmes is provided by Education Donor CIBC, National Arts Centre Friends – Alberta and donors to the NAC’s National Youth and Education Trust. The National Post is the Tour’s National Media Partner.

Special thanks to the Interdepartmental Partnership with the Official-Language Communities, St. John’s Music Ltd., Yamaha Canada Music Ltd. and supporters of the National Youth and Education Trust.

Follow the tour online at www.artsalive.ca.

For more information, contact:
Mary Gordon
Communications Advisor
National Arts Centre
Cell. (613) 614-3877

Jane Morris
Communications Officer
National Arts Centre Orchestra
Cell. (613) 302-0727