Our Mission
The Louisiana Art Music Collective facilitates an opportunity for emerging artists and established musicians to offer concert experiences to members of the Greater Baton Rouge and southern Louisiana community. The initiative centers around the exhibition of art music with the intent of sharing well-crafted, thorough, and heartfelt performances from an ensemble and for an audience that are both representative of the community we serve. We envision providing all involved parties with a memorable, warm, and informative experience that offers a forward-thinking model of the professional performance of classical music in local communities.
Lauren M. Smith on our Artistic & Community Significance…
The state of Louisiana’s distinct culture is nourished by the community’s enthusiasm for all facets of the arts. Members of this community can easily recall the unmistakable warmth of various moments that brought residents of all walks of life together, especially moments attached to song, food, or movement. During the summer months in Greater Baton Rouge, there is a chasm in the arts scene as it relates to classical music. There are few performances taking place during the time frame when individuals, particularly young ones, are seeking engagement. Fortunately, the Louisiana Art Music Collective offers engagement on the frontiers of education, enjoyment, exposure, cultural enrichment, and arts appreciation. The Louisiana Art Music Collective is a grassroots startup that offers high-level artistic outcomes to concertgoers of all ages.
Our inaugural performance featured thirteen musicians from various backgrounds. We engaged with concertgoers and shared a musical representation of our arduous and committed work over years, and even decades. The event alone served over one hundred and fifteen members of the community, and we are just getting started. Other communities throughout the United States implemented similar models and regularly experience consistent engagement from musicians and community members alike.
It all begins with exposure to possibilities. The expansiveness of classical music is intimately known to some, and absolutely foreign to others. The wide array of benefits of listening to classical music is thoroughly researched. For example, consider this study on the long-term effects of music conducted on preschool-aged children “who were given keyboard music lessons for six months, during which time they studied pitch intervals, fingering techniques, sight reading, musical notation and playing from memory. At the end of training all the children were able to perform simple melodies by Beethoven and Mozart. When they did they were then subjected to spatial-temporal reasoning tests calibrated for age, and their performance was more than 30% better than that of children of similar age given either computer lessons for 6 months or no special training (P <0.001).” The benefits of engaging with the music are not limited to the youth. The conclusion of another journal article accessible in the National Journal of Medicine reads, “classical music has a positive impact on the cardiovascular system and potential emotional benefits...Finally, nearly all subjects believe music can help manage stress. Listening to music may be a potential therapeutic method for reducing anxiety and depression. Given the large sample size, the study adds greatly to the current literature by validating the results of other smaller studies.” The pandemic took a toll on active community engagement, but this concert experience promises to be a forward-thinking illustration of the role of the arts in our locality. All have an opportunity to benefit from supporting the Louisiana Art Music Collective.
The Louisiana Art Music Collective serves as a positive representation of how classical music functions in contemporary Louisiana.
1 Jenkins, J S. “The Mozart Effect.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, April 2001. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1281386/#ref15. 2 Darki, Cyrus, Jennifer Riley, Dina P Dadabhoy, Amir Darki, and Jennifer Garetto. “The Effect of Classical Music on Heart Rate, Blood Pressure, and Mood.” Cureus, July 27, 2022. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9417331/.