$50,000 awarded to help increase community participation, broaden audience diversity.

July 8, 2011 (Boston, MA) — The Boston Foundation has awarded the Handel and Haydn Society a one-year $50,000 grant for general support to increase community participation, broaden audience diversity, and support the agency’s capacity to build new community partners with diverse organizations and diversify its income streams and communications models. The Foundation announced its quarterly grants last week following a meeting of the Board of Directors. The Board approved $5.2 million in grants from the Foundation’s Permanent Fund for Boston, which supports its grant making in the Greater Boston area, and some $15 million from other funds held by the Foundation.

“The Handel and Haydn Society is preparing for its Bicentennial celebration in 2015, and as we move closer to this historic landmark, we have been increasing our outreach and community partnerships,” explains Executive Director/CEO Marie-Hélène Bernard. “This grant will strengthen our ability to reach new audiences through educational performances at area children’s and neighborhood organizations, performances programs at sister visual and theater arts organizations, free lectures at public libraries, and many other initiatives.”

Handel and Haydn has received funds from The Boston Foundation in past years, but this grant is the largest to date. This significant award is the result of participation in a highly competitive process whereby a limited number of organizations have been selected under the Foundation’s newly articulated strategies and grant making guidelines.

ABOUT THE BOSTON FOUNDATION
The Boston Foundation, Greater Boston’s community foundation, is one of the oldest and largest community foundations in the nation, with assets of $796 million. In Fiscal Year 2010, the Foundation and its donors made more than $82 million in grants to nonprofit organizations and received gifts of close to $83 million. The Foundation is made up of some 900 separate charitable funds established by donors either for the general benefit of the community or for special purposes. The Boston Foundation also serves as a major civic leader, provider of information, convener, and sponsor of special initiatives designed to address the community’s and region’s most pressing challenges. For more information about the Boston Foundation, visit www.tbf.org or call 617-338-1700.

ABOUT HANDEL AND HAYDN SOCIETY
Handel and Haydn Society is a professional Period Instrument Orchestra and Chorus and an internationally recognize¬d leader in the field of Historically Informed Performance, a revelatory style that uses the instruments and techniques of the composer’s time. Founded in Boston in 1815, H&H is the oldest continuously performing arts organization in the United States and has a longstanding commitment to excellence and innovation: it gave the American premieres of Handel’s Messiah (1818), Haydn’s The Creation (1819), Verdi’s Requiem (1878), and Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (1879). Handel and Haydn today, under Artistic Director Harry Christophers’ leadership, is committed to its mission to perform Baroque and Classical music at the highest levels of artistic excellence and to share that music with as large and diverse an audience as possible. H&H is widely known through its local subscription series, tours, concert broadcasts on WGBH/99.5 Classical and National Public Radio, and recordings. Its recording Lamentations and Praises won a 2002 Grammy Award and two of its recordings, All is Bright and PEACE, appeared simultaneously in the top ten on Billboard Magazine’s classical music chart. In September 2010, H&H released its first collaboration with Harry Christophers on the CORO label, Mozart’s Mass in C Minor—the first in a series of live commercial recordings leading to H&H’s Bicentennial in 2015. The 2010–2011 Season marked the 25th anniversary of Handel and Haydn’s award-winning Karen S. and George D. Levy Educational Outreach Program, which brings music education, vocal training, and performance opportunities to 10,000 students annually throughout Greater Boston and beyond.

Handel and Haydn Society is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.