Who did you turn to for help?
We were blessed to have many experienced artistic and medical partners in the area provide guidance and materials for this performance experience. These include friends from the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Cultural Trust, Duquesne University, Western PA School for the Blind, the Children's Museum, Children's Institute, Autism Connection of PA, CAPA, and Pittsburgh CLO, among others. It really took a whole village!
What are you hoping the community and choir members get from this event?
I'm hoping everyone who attended this event felt welcomed and included to experience the musical brilliance of the choir that anyone else would experience in a more traditional performance setting. We are dedicated to presenting the same programmatic experience while providing the necessary accommodations for new audiences to experience us. Pre-concert activities were designed for anyone to participate in, and accommodating materials such as fidgets, noise-cancelling headphones, and weighted blankets were provided! We are trying to give the same excellent musical experience in a way that accommodates newer audiences, and therefore made it a point to keep the program as similar as possible!
Do you see the Mendelssohn
Choir doing this again in the
future?
Absolutely! We are pleased with
the community's response to our
plans this year thus, having never
done anything like this before.
We definitely want to establish
a relationship with these newly
welcomed communities and
continue to expand on that in
future years after learning from
this first sensory friendly
experience.
We look forward to the 2022 sensory friendly performance!