Contact: Jeremy Sellmeyer FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tel: 314-892-9648

Email: jsellmeyer1@live.maryville.eduCreative Music Making Workshop at Maryville University

ST. LOUIS, March 23, 2014 Its time to get creative this Wednesday, March 26, at Maryville University for Creative Music Making: now a calendar event to celebrate STL250! Creative Music Making, a three-day workshop, joins individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities from St. Louis Arc, students and faculty from Maryville Universitys Music Therapy Department and musicians from the St. Louis Symphony to explore and experience music together.

Some of the symphony musicians are here, music therapy students who are also musicians are here and we have customers from life skills, and our job for the [three] days is to make music together, explained Dr. Cynthia Briggs, Director of the Music Therapy Program at Maryville University.

This years workshop marks the fourth consecutive year for Creative Music Making, and the partnerships between St. Louis Arc, Maryville Universitys Music Therapy Department and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Community Partnership remain solid. The idea for the event originated back in 2011 from the minds of Dr. Briggs and Marc Thayer, Vice President for Education and Community Partnerships for the St. Louis Symphony.

Weve enjoyed interacting with them in different ways and decided this would be a great way to partner with them, with their students, with their staff, and with the symphony musicians, said Thayer.

The group will create and perform a live 20-minute collaborative production, which can be seen for free at 7 p.m. in the Maryville University Auditorium this Wednesday evening. The theme for this years nightappropriately enoughis celebrating St. Louis and its 250th anniversary.

Although STL250 will become a large focus of the event, the empowerment of the individuals participating will always be stressed first along with the way music can unite people together.

Music can tear down any boundary, it can open up doors, and it can be accessible to all people, said St. Louis Symphony Cellist, Bjorn Ranheim. Thats the power of music.

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About St. Louis Arc

The St. Louis Arc is a non-profit, United Way agency that provides support and services to more than 3,500 adults and children with intellectual and developmentaldisabilities, and their families, throughout the St. Louis metropolitan area. Since 1983, St. Louis Arc has been accredited by The Council on Quality and Leadership (CQL), an international not-for-profit organization dedicated to being a leader for excellence in the definition, measurement and evaluation of personal and community quality of life for people with disabilities. In 2004 and again in 2008, St. Louis Arc became one of only a handful of organizations in the world to be awarded a Value-Added accreditation from CQL. Learn more at www.slarc.org

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