(Image provided by Time In Kids)

Soprano Angel Blue will be presenting an online workshop for New York City public high school students in collaboration with Time In Children’s Arts Initiative.

The program will be presented within the framework of “Summer in the City,” a coalition of arts and culture organizations to provide learning opportunities for students throughout the summer.

The program was the brainchild of Cyndie Berthézène, the founder of Time In Children’s Arts Initative, who over the course of eight weeks, joined a daily Zoom meeting with over 250 of the city’s leading arts professionals and proposed a free virtual and interactive program for children to engage with throughout the summer.

“This summer – under the stricture of COVID-19, every NYC public school child is deeply disadvantaged. The magic of childhood and youth has been taken from them. The virus has deprived them of their right to go outdoors, to share, to experiment and grow. Parents have lost their jobs. Families are barely hanging on. But we can’t let a virus get the better of us. COVID-19 has shown us that we can be smarter, more generous, more powerful by working together. Summer in the City levels the playing field for every NYC public school child to work in a holistically integrated space, sharing resources, and learning from each other through the arts. With over 14,000 hours of free, live virtual arts programming, Time In is once again changing the world,” Cyndie Berthézene, the founder of Time In Children’s Arts Initiative told OperaWire regarding the program.

Blue will be presenting a Celebrity Lunchtime Workshop focused on Art Song. The workshop will meet on July 28 and 30.

“In deciding on the workshop’s direction Angel wrote of the loss of her father when she was in her early 20’s. It was through Richard Dehmel’s poetry -set by Strauss set in ‘Befreit’ – that Angel came to terms with the loss. Exploring how as humans we come to understand and express our emotions through poetry and music will be the focus of Angel’s work with 20 teenagers next week,” Berthézène added.

In sum, there will be over 150 virtual summer-long arts workshops servicing thousands of children throughout New York City from over 50 of the city’s leading arts providers. Classes began on July 6.