This blog is submitted by Jeff Hunt, Conductor of the St Charles Singers.

Greetings from the newest kids on the CCM musical blog.  

It's indeed a privilege to be newcomers to Chicago Classical Music and the St. Charles Singers are grateful to be a cog in the wheel of Chicago's amazing and very vibrant music scene.  And what a colorful, energetic, creative scene it is.  

This is my opportunity to say thank you to the incredible organizations of Chicago Classical Music for the great work you do.  You continue to make our lives as attendees richer and fuller.  

As you might imagine, I am especially aware, appreciative and sensitive to the work that goes into the creative process of other organizations; St. Charles Singers is entering our 25th year of music making. How could 25 years fly by so fast?   What a wonderful journey it has been.  

I started the group by calling friends and family on the phone (no email...not yet in 1984) and tempted them with the offer of starting a chamber choir. Enough said "sure why not" (little did they know!) and we were off to our first rehearsal with 12 singers. I won't bore you with the timeline but suffice it to say, the journey over the 25 years has been humbling, and like many arts organizations, filled with many challenges along the way.  

It hasn't always been easy but I have always tried to have music be at the center of all that transpires in and about the choir. We—me with my great board of directors and volunteers—ask the central question: what's best for the music?  We follow that path.  We haven’t succeeded, but the music has always been our goal.  

Finally, and this brings me back to the cog in the wheel. We’re a part of a bigger enterprise. Other musicians who are equally committed to excellence enhance our music making.  We are honed by many groups that continue to nurture and support composers, musicians and their audiences.

Thank you and we look forward to many more years of music making with you all.

Jeff Hunt

Last Saturday (April 5) marked the premiere of Introductions, a brand-new weekly program on 98.7 WFMT (Saturdays from 11:00am-12:00pm) which features Chicago-area pre-collegiate musicians doing what they love most; playing classical music.

"It's important to reach out specifically to this younger audience which is enthusiastic about classical music, that we hadn't tried to explicitly attract until now," said David Polk, the show's producer. "I'm excited that I get to expand WFMT's reach and pioneer new ways to connect with audiences via the airwaves and also the internet."

Read more about Introductions and Polk in this article in the recent TimeOut! Magazine.

Social network services on the Internet come and go; a while ago MySpace was the dominant service, now it is equaled, and soon undoubtedly surpassed, by Facebook in traffic. There are dozens of other popular services, such as Orkut and Friendster, and probably thousands of small, niche-market sites.

What’s an arts organization to do with all this new media? Jason Heath talks about it in a video (in which he mentions Chicago Classical Music as an excellent example). In the last section, he talks about Facebook (“more and more Facebook over Myspace,” according to Jason).

Facebook didn’t start out very business friendly, but there have always been ways for fans of different organizations to express their love. The most commonly used way was Facebook Groups. Some of CCM’s Participating Organizations have these groups (I’m not sure which were started by fans and which were started by the organization: Ars Antiqua; Chicago Chamber Musicians; Grand Park Music Festival; Ravinia Festival). The CSO has several, all started by fans.

Then in November of last year, Facebook launched Facebook Pages. Two CCM organizations have already established a presence: Chicago Opera Theater and WFMT. Today, we launched our own Facebook page. There are obvious marketing benefits to having a page for your own organization, but I believe the main strength is building a community and participate (just like CCM aims to do).

So go explore Facebook and if you have an account, be sure to become a fan of the CSO. If you do so before this Friday, April 11, you enter for a chance to win the latest recording from our new CSO Resound label, Mahler’s Symphony No. 6, signed by Principal Conductor Bernard Haitink.

Regarding Jim's blog on Dudamel's appearance on 60 Minutes (which agreed is a good piece), I'd like to link to Andrew Patner's Critical Thinking interview with Dudamel which took place just days before he flew to California (mid-stint with the CSO!) to make his announcement with the LA Philharmonic. Contrary to the last line of the 60 Minutes piece, we in fact heard all about Dudamel on WFMT first.

Amy Iwano.  I was on a Southwest Airlines flight the other day, off to attend to some family business in Ohio before the Grant Park Music Festival is scheduled to swing into action later this week.  Leafing through Spirit Magazine, the Southwest Publication designed to keep our minds off turbulence and on happy, interesting thoughts, I happened upon an article featuring the Chicago Chamber Musicians’ own Amy Iwano.

The subtitle reads, “A musician (and mother) picks the best classical albums for kids.”  Since Amy is an expert on chamber music AND kids, I urge you to pick up a copy this month to see what she has to say.  If you don’t have access to a Southwest flight this month, check out the article online by clicking here.  Go Amy.