CULTURE + ARTS, EXCLUSIVES / FEATURES

SPAC Celebrates ‘Festival Of Young Artists’ With More Than 400 Of The Area’s Best And Brightest

By Lawrence White

June 4, 2018

The Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) partnered with the Empire State Youth Orchestra, Northeast Ballet Company and the Capital District Youth Chorale to present its first-ever “Festival of Young Artists” on Sunday, June 3. The program celebrated the creative spirit of more than 400 of the Capital Region’s brightest young dancers, musicians, singers, poets and visual artists.

The festival featured student pop-up performances, fine art displays, food stands, poetry jams, immersive workshops and activities all over the grounds of SPAC. Later in the afternoon, hundreds of young artists presented a one-hour concert on SPAC’s main stage, featuring a song-and-dance production of works by great American composers such as Aaron Copland, Howard Hanson, Duke Ellington, George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers.

The day also included an official dedication ceremony for the new Charles R. Wood Stage (previously called The Gazebo). SPAC President and CEO Elizabeth Sobol led the ceremony, with Wood’s wife was in attendance.

Lawrence White

Lawrence White has been a professional photographer for more than four decades. In that period of time, his work has been published in Time magazine, Rolling Stone, Vogue and The New York Times, among others. He also won an American Film Institute award in 1994 and a New York Press Association award for his images of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in NYC.