Our Work In Local Schools

With the generous support of our members, donors, and partners Stanford Live provided arts education offerings to our community through a variety of free or low-cost opportunities during the 2023–24 school year. Along with a series of student matinees and teacher workshops, we brought artists into schools and sowed the seeds of art appreciation and curriculum integration.

A welcome development, after our years of pandemic challenges, was this season’s strong student matinee attendance. We welcomed 32 schools from Silicon Valley and beyond to five student matinees this season, with students exploring multiple art forms and diverse global cultures. We were at 75% of capacity for the season, with almost 3,200 attending and two of five performances at full capacity. We were pleased to make many curricular connections, with the performances encompassing all five art forms covered by the California State Arts Standards: music, dance, theater, visual arts, and media arts. We supported increased access to arts learning, donating 44.5% of tickets to Title 1 schools, along with full subsidies for bus expenses.

We opened our season with The House Jacks, the five-member group who helped establish the sound of contemporary a cappella. Their beautiful harmonies, propulsive arrangements, virtuosic beatboxing, and creative interactions with the audience received thunderous applause from a sold-out house spanning kindergarten through 12th grade.

November brought Manual Cinema’s stunning Frankenstein. The innovative Chicago-based ensemble’s mix of shadow puppetry, silent film techniques, live actors and musicians, and film led to a unique and enthralling adaptation of the classic. It was especially fulfilling to host several 8th grade classes from the Redwood City K-8 district, who read a graphic novel adaptation of Frankenstein as part of their curriculum.

The great jazz drummer, bandleader and educator Terri Lyne Carrington joined us for a residency highlighting her work in elevating the role of women in jazz. Her band’s student matinee featured music by women composers spanning the past century, leading students to discover jazz and simultaneously see the importance of women in the art form. Carrington and other band members shared warm words of encouragement with a middle school jazz band that came to meet them afterwards, telling two girls who play drums in the ensemble to continue their musical learning and that “we need more women drummers.”

Carrington and several bandmembers also lead a workshop at Gunn High School in Palo Alto. She struck a wonderful balance between technical aspects of jazz and the pursuit of deeper levels of meaning in music, sharing wisdom from mentors of hers such as Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock.

We closed our season with two very well-received March performances. The Sphinx Virtuosi brought a beautifully designed program, making classical music more accessible with warm and engaging spoken introductions to the music, casual dress, and repertoire by composers whose backgrounds mirrored the ensemble’s Black and Latino makeup. In our post-performance surveys, one teacher noted it was,

"Wonderful to see and hear a performance from performers who reflect my student’s demographic. They noticed and felt proud."

Following the sold-out Sphinx matinee, over 900 students and teachers attended Malpaso Dance Company, our first student matinee at Memorial Auditorium since fall 2019. The company performed their “24 Hours and a Dog,” which imagines a dog following the dancers through the streets of Havana over a 24-hour period, depicted by the company’s expressive style through a range of moods. The dancing was followed by an extended Q&A that touched thoughtfully on topics such as the sacrifices required to craft a life as an artist.

Austin Willacy and Greg Fletcher of the House Jacks launched our season of professional development for educators with a workshop on “Music as Communication,” coaching 50 members of the Palo Alto High School Concert Choir. They emphasized the importance of listening, in music and throughout life, an approach that provided tools for both music teachers and generalist teachers to bring back to their classrooms. The workshop ended on an energetic note with Greg and Austin coaching the chorus on “All Night Long” in an arrangement by House Jacks founder Deke Sharon.

In advance of Manual Cinema’s performance of Frankenstein, we offered a workshop on shadow puppetry led by Kennedy Center teaching artist Daniel Barash. He shared an overview of shadow puppetry around the world, demonstrated its effectiveness in teaching multiple subjects and linking narrative to visual and kinesthetic learning, and then brought teachers together in groups to create their own shadow puppets and perform for each other. In post-workshop surveys, one teacher even noted,

"I’m looking forward to using shadow puppetry to teach the digestive system!"

We extended the previous season’s arts and healing workshop series with a session on “Restorative Practices with a Creative Twist,” led by acclaimed arts educator and frequent collaborator of ours Michelle Holdt. Participants explored writing, collage, and visual arts exercises meant to strengthen their own well-being and support social emotional learning in the classroom, addressing pandemic challenges that continue to resonate for both teachers and students.

We concluded the year’s workshops with “The Sound of Equity” led by musician, educator, and arts equity advocate Armando Castellano, who serves as lead teaching artist in our in-school programs in the Ravenswood district. Armando shared his approaches to championing diversity and inclusion in classical music, and how they can transfer to build classrooms in which every student has a voice.

In our ongoing partnership with the Ravenswood City School District, resident teaching artists Quinteto Latino collaborated on individualized programs with all four district music teachers. These included co-teaching classes, leading creative projects with students, and offering interactive assembly performances. The quintet introduced a new cohort of teaching artists, the QL Fellows, who are all Latino graduate students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Quinteto Latino Founder Armando Castellano mentored the Fellows and led program design in collaboration with the district music teachers as the Fellows brought their own new ideas and energy to the program.

We provided at least 12 classroom visits, along with three or four assembly performances, either in music classrooms or for larger student groups, at all four district school s. The teaching artists prepared students for matinee performances, linking our in-school and on-campus programs. Ravenswood schools participated enthusiastically in our student matinees, attending multiple performances and making up 22% of total attendance. As Ravenswood is an all-Title 1 district, we again covered both tickets and bus costs.

We were excited to bring back composer commissioning as part of the programs. Colombia-born Bay Area composer Juan Sebastián Cardona Espina spent time getting to know Belle Haven Elementary students and crafted a lovely, tuneful piece for their recorder ensemble to play alongside two members of Quinteto Latino. The piece gave students a chance to play music with their teachers that was specifically created for them, helping inspire a sense of ownership and enjoyment in their learning. The students gave an energetic premiere performance for their peers on the Belle Haven playground in May, closing out the year’s programs.

A promising new direction for the programs was an increase in artist visits to schools. To start the year, we brought pan-Latin women’s ensemble Ladama to Hoover Elementary in Redwood City for joyful performances that had the school’s entire student body dancing and cheering. Ladama’s bilingual assembly format was a perfect cultural fit and a special opportunity for a school in which 95% of students are Hispanic, 66% are English learners, and 90% are socioeconomically disadvantaged. The visit gave a boost to our growing relationship with the Redwood City School District, and in particular Hoover, whose teachers will bring classes to two of our 2024–25 student matinees.

Our program metrics demonstrated many positive results, including our baseline measures below:

• Total students served: 4,953 (93% increase from FY23 total of 2,570, 131% increase over average from three prior years of 2,135, reflecting increases in number of student matinee performances, students served in Ravenswood programs, and school visits).
• Total program hours: 102 (our third consecutive season with over 100 program hours) .
• Total ticket donations: We donated a total of 1,415 tickets valued at $11,320 to our student matinees, representing 44.5% of total attendance. We also subsidized 21 buses.
• Net promoter score: When participants were asked “With 10 being ‘extremely likely’ and 1 being ‘not at all likely,’ how likely are you to recommend Stanford Live’s K-12 programs to fellow educators?” the average response was 9.6 for teacher workshops, 8.95 for student matinees.
• Average score on “How likely are you to use this training in your teaching” from teacher workshop surveys: 93% were very likely (highest rating).

In addition, 89% of teachers participating in workshops rated their overall experience as excellent, 7% rated them as very good.

To learn about our 2024-25 season K-12 student matinees and teacher workshops, click here.