At The American Pops Orchestra, we’re just as committed to building up our community of artists, performers, students and partners as we are producing exciting musical events and concerts. APO is dedicated to giving back to the artistic community through partnering with other organizations to build community in the arts world. We regularly contribute to and hold up LGBTQ+ organizations and performing arts nonprofits across the country through event partnerships, including our Name That Tune Trivia series, Drag Out The Holly concert, and more. As we navigated the COVID-19 pandemic, The American Pops Orchestra doubled down on our efforts to compensate our artists fairly during a time of uncertainty. Thanks to our generous supporters, we presented 80 virtual events throughout 2020 and were able to pay our artists at a pre-COVID rate. This page highlights just a few of the ways APO gives back to the broader arts community.
The American Pops Orchestra has made it a priority to not only maintain Pre-COVID content in a virtual form, but also create new content to keep our audience engaged and our musicians employed. As an organization that strives to break the mold of concerts, we are using COVID-19 to reimagine our normal operations. Since March we have streamed two full original concerts, created solo performances by instrumentalist and vocalists, rethought our Music and Mindfulness series as a more often and virtual event, and partnered with organizations across the country in our virtual trivia series.
In addition, APO has held multiple in-person socially distanced outdoor Porch Concerts that provide our audience with the opportunity to safely see live art despite the current situation around us. Throughout the pandemic, APO has employed hundreds of musicians and artists and in a time when many other organizations couldn’t. In the words of Maestro Luke Frazier, “we never stopped.”
Moving forward, APO is proud to present our NextGen National vocal competition which will include students from across the country competing virtually for the chance to win a monetary prize and the opportunity to perform in a future APO MainStage Show. This will include a virtual audition and semi-finals with a live (COVID permitting) finals in Spring of 2021. APO has also filmed multiple productions that will be broadcast nationally on PBS. APO has been grateful to keep creating and making music despite the limitations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and will keep working to bring you, our valued audience, original and unique content.
To support APO as we keep moving forward you can click here, so that we can continue to employ more artists and musicians. If you have any questions about what APO has been doing during the pandemic, please email hannah@theamericanpops.org. Thank you and stay safe.