This Monday, I would like to share with you some more aspects of the ever-evolving PIANO SLAM initiative.
What began as Dranoff‘s program to bring world class professional classical has become a valued education program providing curriculum and experiences for students and teachers across the academic in Miami landscape.
Each year, we explore a particular theme that relates to our lives in Miami. We offer geographic, scientific and artistic context that forms the basis of a curriculum taught in schools. The emotional fascia pulling the academic learning together is our poetry competition.
Miami MEMORIES - What’s Changed. My New Normal
Culture. COVID. CLIMATE
At this moment in time when our students need more nurturing and more emotional re-connection to make up for the lost semester, the school district asked for more education and more involvement from the Dranoff artist community partners. And those partners have stepped in, brilliantly, as this week PIANO SLAM 13 gets underway.
Our 8 year partnership with The University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science provides cutting edge climate research and education for teachers and students to enhance understanding of the inescapable effect of climate change on hurricanes.
Miami Book Fair has been a wonderful partner bringing top writers from all over the world and showcasing our local talent, many of whom have been part of the PIANO SLAM education initiatives. Today you will hear from the poet Celia Sorhaindo from Dominica, reading her poem Ajai Alai"about life affected by Hurricane Maria. Destruction and renewal. Fear and joy.
One of the pieces of classical music that conveys chaos, destruction but also our unquenchable thirst for beauty is Ravel’s La Valse, here performed by the Duo Chipak & Kushnir, gold medal winners of the Dranoff 2 Piano Competition.
A reflection on PIANO SLAM would not be complete without the performance of student poet. 8th grade student Vivian Diep mourns the human destruction of Nature with her poem “The Storm”, followed by a visual storm by the dancers of the Rosie Herrera troupe in the performance at the Arsht Center in February of this year, before our lives turned inward.
Warmly,
Gabriele Fiorentino
President,
The Dranoff 2 Piano Foundation
Piano Slam
