Education

FAMILY CONCERTS

Music lovers of all ages delight in The Knights’ family-friendly performances that celebrate world-class music in an engaging, interactive setting. The Knights perform excerpts from well-known works and contemporary compositions alongside audience participation activities that highlight musical details and showcase the way instruments can tell a story. In these accessible performances, children and their parents discover the limitless imaginative possibilities that exist in classical music.

Recent Family Concerts have been organized in partnership with the Skaneateles Festival, the Clark Art Institute, and Wethersfield Estate & Garden.

Education Partner: New York Philharmonic Very Young Composers

For the 2024 season, The Knights will serve as the Education Partner for the New York Philharmonic's Very Young Composers program. Knights musicians will engage with the VYC students through class visits, instrument demonstrations, and informal performances to provide guidance and feedback on their compositions. The partnership will culminate with a recording session at WQXR's Greene Space of selected student compositions.

IN RESIDENCE AT USDAN SUMMER CAMP FOR THE ARTS

For the last three years, musicians from The Knights have been artists in residence at Usdan Summer Camp for the Arts on Long Island.

In 2022, The Knights joined forces with Ocean Music Action and choreographer & dancer Maile Okamura to mentor Usdan’s young artists and collaboratively create a project entitled Bodies of Water, which investigated human beings’ deep and visceral connection to water.

Meet Caitlin Sullivan, our artist leader for Education programming

One of the earliest graduates of Carnegie Hall's Ensemble Connect fellowship in 2009, Caitlin discovered her passion for arts advocacy, and has been nurturing her skill for designing interactive concert experiences ever since. 

For more than 15 years, Caitlin has been facilitating performance environments that encourage personal connections to classical music and beyond. She has been a visitor to schools, universities, hospitals, retirement homes, correctional facilities, museums, and concert spaces as a performer and teaching artist for numerous ensembles, including the New York Philharmonic, IRIS Orchestra, and the affiliate ensemble of Carnegie Hall, Decoda. 

While a member of Decoda, Caitlin designed and led bespoke interactive performances for school children and adult audiences alike across the US, UK, Japan, and South Africa, as well as musical workshops for college students in the US and UK. A longtime member of IRIS Orchestra, she has led many interactive chamber music performances for K-12 students throughout the greater Memphis area. 

Closer to home, Caitlin regularly visited many rural school districts throughout the Adirondack region of New York State to give workshops and interactive performances while working alongside members of The Learning Arts. During her two-year fellowship with Ensemble Connect, Caitlin was a teaching artist at PS 153 in Harlem, where she co-designed a culminating project called the MUSIC (Musically Uniting Students in Correspondence) Exchange: a mentorship side-by-side performance of students and professional musicians, including a penpal letter exchange program between students and their music mentors.