Last month, all fourth- and fifth-grade students from District 112 enjoyed Journey Live, an original, interactive live performance of the Grammy-nominated score to the video game Journey performed by the Fifth House Ensemble at Ravinia Festival.
In addition to an extraordinary concert offering for the students, the performance marked the culmination of a 12-year partnership with the festival’s Reach Teach Play’s Guest Artists in the Classroom Program (GAIC), as the ensemble members go their separate ways after a strong and joyful 17 years together.
Although a farewell, the concert was also a time of celebrating Fifth House Ensemble who, before the pandemic, regularly collaborated with Reach Teach Play to bring numerous creative and educational live classical music performances into many of Ravinia’s most under-resourced partner schools throughout the Chicago area. Thus, they will be remembered for having delighted thousands of Chicago Public Schools students whose schools had no formal music programs.
“Fifth House Ensemble’s musicians were talented, of course, but above all they were creative and ambitious,” said Luciano Pedota, the Associate Director of Reach Teach Play who oversees GAIC. “They were ready to transform the culture of classical music by making it more accessible and finding ways to engage and connect with new audiences and so they did with us.”
Fifth House Ensemble in a performance of The Firebird at Pasteur Elementary, February 2016
The ensemble comprised talented young musicians just out of their conservatories or performance programs who were very eager to showcase everything they had learned in all the years of mastering their instruments. One of the most creative and impactful projects that resulted from Ravinia’s collaboration with Fifth House Ensemble was a special eight-musician arrangement by Cliff Colnot of Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird, which included a performance by professional dancer Vanessa Valecillos as the mythical bird, as well as storytelling adapted from Rachel Isadora’s children book of the same name. Over 14 performances were eventually presented in Ravinia’s partner Chicago Public Schools, District 112, and North Chicago schools.
Fifth House Ensemble in a performance of Of Time & Space at New Sullivan Elementary, February 2017
Similarly, in collaboration with KV 265, an organization dedicated to promoting science through art, Ravinia and Fifth House Ensemble developed an original project called Of Time and Space, which included small-ensemble arrangements of large orchestral pieces like Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, Gustav Holst’s The Planets, Dan Visconti’s Low Country Haze, and Camille Saint-Saëns’s Carnival of the Animals, all creatively combined to tell a fantastic and imaginative story of the universe’s origin.
“The amount of work accomplished by Fifth House Ensemble during its existence is incalculable, especially when measured in terms of creativity and being able to capture the imagination and attention of the novice of classical music,” Pedota said.
In their farewell note to their colleagues and partners, Fifth House Ensemble expressed their gratitude: “To have experienced the true essence of human interaction and communication through music has been a gift beyond our wildest imaginations. We create space for the next generation of bold artmakers gladly and pass the torch in eager anticipation of their amazing artistry and thought leadership.”
In-school performance by Fifth House Ensemble at Catalyst Circle Rock, 2018
“Fifth House Ensemble has set a high standard for the field of performance and music education in the classical world. Anyone new in this field aspiring to succeed in the future should look very closely at their legacy as a starting point,” Pedota said.