For years, nonprofit arts agencies have been building partnerships across audiences with subscriptions, across artists and talent through residencies and repertory companies, and recently across the nonprofits whose missions might align with a particular production's subject matter. In the coming weeks, we'll present some previews of the upcoming cultural season and the creative ways our artists and the organizations that support them are finding to keep the arts alive under the Big Sky.
We'll start with Opera Montana, arguably one of the most difficult and problematic performance genres to sell to. with today's shortened attention spans. Not so much Opera Montana. Susan Miller is the company's General Director.
Susan:
Wheels of Harmony is our school tour that centers indigenous culture in music, um, that will take place this coming fall.
The Opera Montana Veterans Chorus is two years strong now. That came in response to a new work we did called The Falling and the Rising, which centers a local military chorus. The relationships that we built with the individual members of that chorus and the veteran service organizations that we partnered with to make that all happen were so meaningful to us as an organization and as individuals on staff that we did not wanna let that go.
And we, we started attending lot of the veterans events and there, um, was always somebody playing taps and there was always somebody, um, speaking. But there was no vocal music and we're like. We can do that. That's what we do. We just open this up. It's completely, um, the, the chorus members are volunteers, but we provide all of the administrative support, including a new, um, offering, is that we partner with local voice teachers and any of our Veterans Chorus members that wanna take voice lessons, it's free.
We pay for that.
These are the things that we can do. To serve the community, and while it is turbulent times, we're really lucky that we have an incredible support system from all walks of town and the state.
Karl:
Can you tell us just a little bit more about the outreach that you continue with youth and how important that is to the arts?
Susan:
Absolutely. We reach young people in a couple of different ways. The first way is through our school tour Wheels of Harmony, which brings three indigenous artists, uh, traveling to mostly rural and tribal schools in Montana. The feedback that we've gotten from that - this will be our fourth tour this coming fall, and the feedback that we've gotten is incredible from elementary school students that send us letters that say things like, "I loved how big your voice was. Like I, it made me feel happy."
So bringing professional opera singers and musicians to schools in their own classrooms because we know that as much as we wish we could serve everybody in the state with our main stage productions, many folks can't attend. Montana is huge. Folks can't always travel here to see that.
So we, we bring it to them. And then the second way is through our Opera Montana Youth Chorus, and this has been something we've been committed to in the last four seasons where we find at least one of our productions has an opportunity for youth to be a part of the chorus. This provides them professional music training through, um, working with our Youth Chorus Director, Jessica Graf, and also professional stage opportunities with stage directors from all over the country. Of course, professional conductors of our own - Michael Sakir, our Artistic Director, or guest conductors that we bring in. They learn how to be professional actors really through being around folks that have performed at the Metropolitan Opera and they're five feet away learning how to behave backstage, how to behave on stage.
And this is something that we are continuing to expand in this coming year. If you are looking for them, you'll be finding them on many different stages across Bozeman, at least, and hopefully further in the future. Of course in Tosca coming up, and we have two youth roles in Ragtime, so we'll be featuring some young actors there.
Bbut it's something that we're committing to more and more, um, as, uh, as time goes on.
This interview first aired June 3, 2025.
