I mean really! Close your eyes for a minute or two and try to imagine what your world would be like without the arts -- without music, without visual art, without story. In a world without the arts, you would not be able to sing "Happy Birthday" to your child. You and your spouse would not savor that favorite song that reminds you of when you met. You would never have read about or heard of or seen a movie about Michael Jackson, the Beatles, Bach, Mitch Miller, Barney, Elvis, Pavarotti, Mozart, Jimi Hendrix, Lawrence Welk, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Billie Holiday, Beethoven, Dizzie Gillespie, Robert Shaw, Frank Sinatra, Kermit the Frog, George Beverly Shea or Britney Spears. All of us have been touched by one or another musical influence that floods our souls with memories we cherish. And can you possibly imagine worship without music? Add to this, the countless authors, painters, actors, poets, sculptors, and dancers that have met our eyes and ears throughout the ages and influenced our lives in profound ways. Nearly everything you encounter, from the box of cereal which you fed your children this morning to the annoying sound of your alarm clock to the car you drive and the building you are now sitting in, began as an idea in a designer's mind. Some may argue, the arts have taught us all how to think, how to speak, even how to live. How pervasive, indeed nearly inescapable, are the arts in our world!
The arts give enormous meaning to all of our lives - every day, day in, day out. The arts are both a means for expression by the artist and a means for gaining an understanding of our world that would be otherwise unattainable for us in our limited experiences. The arts are vital to living a full, well-rounded life. Where the arts are embraced and flourish, there is a marked decrease in social pathologies - poverty, crime, juvenile delinquency, drug abuse. It is widely acknowledged that arts education significantly helps individuals develop "core competencies" needed for all careers and nurtures such foundational interpersonal skills as problem-solving, individual responsibility, confidence, sociability, and creative thinking.
The Holland Chorale has a 48-year heritage of providing arts experiences to our community and we believe that creating the appropriate environment for our community's aesthetic growth is the essences of our success. The Chorale strives to be family friendly and artistically extraordinary. Our mission demands that we embrace and support our community's rich and diverse cultural background.
Our future, as in our past, will measure our success by the support we generate from within the community itself. The Holland Chorale and the Community Enrichment Program needs your support now more than ever. Write a check now to help underwrite the artistic enrichment of our community's youth on into posterity. The influence of the arts is something our community can't afford to lose!