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	The Plan
	Vox Corda believes that studying and presenting music from many cultures and genres can provide an important introduction to and respect for these many different, heretofore foreign musical worlds, plus the cultures and people they represent. In turn we can also gain a new depth of understanding of our own culture and musical genre through the lens of others. The immediate goal for the 2004-2005 season is to create the Vox Corda String Orchestra, a professional string orchestra that presents educational public concerts pairing “classical” string orchestra music with folk-based string music. The plan is to mount two of these cross-cultural performances to “test” the concept, and then decide how and if to go forward with Vox Corda. For orchestra members the most important element of preparations for each concert will be workshops with our guest string musician(s) as part of each rehearsal. Thus just by performing with the Vox Corda String Orchestra our orchestra members will also receive a hands-on introduction to alternative genres of string music performance and teaching. The initial base for operations for Vox Corda will be in Richfield, Minnesota. Performance and rehearsal space for the Vox Corda String Orchestra will likely be at the Emerson Congregational Church, while the business of Vox Corda will initially be run from the home office of Elizabeth Prielozny Barnes The management and advisory team for the initial productions includes interested friends and business associates of Elizabeth Prielozny Barnes Membership in the inaugural Vox Corda String Orchestra is for professional string (violin, viola, cello, bass) musicians and string musicians who play at a professional level, even though they may earn their income in another field. We expect that this orchestra will be of particular interest to teaching musicians, as the tools for teaching to be gained through alternative musical styles are manifold. Auditions will be held in early January. Rehearsals will be held on several successive Monday evenings in January and February to prepare for our first Sunday afternoon performance in February. This orchestra will form the centerpiece from which we expect generations of new activities, products and services will emerge. They might include recordings, treatises and new teaching methods for music and other art forms, and curriculum in cultural studies, literature and the sciences. We will likely commission musical compositions for string orchestra plus new combinations of string instruments. Touring performances, printed and web-based periodicals, string music societies, teaching and coaching, consulting with other symphony orchestras, musical ensembles, arts organizations and teaching institutions are all feasible outcomes of Vox Corda development.
	A Vision for the Future of Vox Corda: create the Vox Corda String Orchestra create new avenues, methods, and resources for string music education discover the coincidences and complements between string music traditions create new entries into cultures and social structures represented by each string music tradition discover how individual string music traditions can add to the standard practices of other string music traditions discover entirely new sound experiences, technical possibilities and compositional vocabulary for existing musical ensembles and ultimately to create new musical ensembles.