The Dream Unfinished: Raise Your Hand at Great Hall of Cooper Union 5 PM Sunday, June 11, 2017; Student & Professional Musicians Perform Together

Activist Orchestra Against the School-to-Prison-Pipeline

New York, NY, May 8, 2017 - Activist orchestra The Dream Unfinished will present “Raise Your Hand” at the Great Hall of Cooper Union. Held on June 11, National Children’s Day, at 5:00PM, Raise Your Hand will serve as a musical protest against the school-to-prison-pipeline: the increasingly widespread trend of pushing children of color out of schools and into the penal and criminal justice systems.

The headline concert on June 11 will feature a side-by-side orchestra of student musicians performing alongside professional musicians, and include guest speakers such as activist and youth mentor Antonio Hendrickson and actor Ruffin Prentiss. The keynote speakers will be the Bobcats, a group of students who created the reForm project: a long term art installation which examined and protested the closure of Philadelphia’s Fairhill Elementary School. The musical program features all composers of color, including the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Teresa Carreño, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, William Grant Still, George Walker, and a world premiere by Evan Williams. Under the artistic direction of Terrance McKnight (WQXR Evening Host), the orchestra will be led by Minnesota Symphony’s Associate Conductor Roderick Cox, and feature concertmaster Kelly Hall-Tompkins (Sunset Boulevard). Soloists include harpist Dr. Ashley Jackson, and soprano Rosemarie Albanese from the Manhattan Girls Chorus. The Dream Unfinished Orchestra will include students from the Corona Youth Music Project, UpBeat NYC, WHIN Music Project, and the Youth Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Event partners include the Museum of Impact, Lead by Example/Reverse the Trend, the Center for Constitutional Rights and Black Women's Blueprint.

Raise Your Hand is presented by The Dream Unfinished: An Activist Orchestra, whose mission is to provide a platform for classical musicians to show solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Tickets are $25 General Admission and $10 for students in advance, and $35 General Admission and $20 for students at the door. For more information please visit http://bit.ly/tdu2017, or contact Patti Kilroy at marketing@thedreamunfinished.org.

###