This year’s Central Florida Vocal Arts Summer Institute will be taught at the Winter Park High School 9th Grade Center, with kids ages 7 to 12 and their slightly older peers in the 13-to-18 bracket. As has become a CFVA tradition, each week’s activity will culminate with a Friday-night vocal recital, open to the public, in which every student gets a solo turn at the mic. | Courtesy Central Florida Vocal Arts
Arts, don’t assume that it’s merely a summer school for kids who want to learn how to sing. Sure, the organization’s intensive, weeklong Summer Institute programs—there are two, one for each of two age ranges—provide expert instruction in voice.
But there’s also training in dance, scriptwriting and storytelling—just about every discipline that a well-rounded child of the footlights needs to master to compete in the performing arts marketplace of tomorrow.
This year’s Summer Institute will be taught at the Winter Park High School 9th Grade Center, with kids ages 7 to 12 attending from June 8 to 13 (Summer I) and their slightly older peers in the 13-to-18 bracket following from June 15 to 20 (Summer II).
As has become a CFVA tradition, each week’s activity will culminate with a Friday-night vocal recital, open to the public, in which every student gets a solo turn at the mic. That’s followed by a Saturday performance of a musical-theater showcase devised and rehearsed by the students over the previous five days.
Theresa Smith-Levin, founder and executive director of CFVA, says that level of achievement is possible because enrollment is capped at 50 kids per unit, ensuring maximum attention from the staff of directors, vocal coaches and other creative professionals.
Smith-Levin says that in the program’s 13-year history, not one prospective student has been turned away due to financial hardship. Approximately 70 percent of enrollees, she estimates, receive assistance in paying their tuition, thus ensuring that the roster of participants remains diverse culturally and socioeconomically.
And while the main goal is obviously to hone the kids’ artistic talents, there are plenty of ancillary life-skill benefits to this and other youth-oriented arts activities.
“The courage required to stand alone at a microphone and share their voice often translates into raised hands in classrooms, leadership in school organizations and a willingness to take creative risks beyond the stage,” says Smith-Levin. “In that sense, the impact of the Institute extends far beyond performance—it shapes how young people see themselves and their place in their community.”
Of course, it’s thoroughly OK if they also want to see themselves as stars of tomorrow. CFVA is bringing in Orlando-bred Broadway performer Jasmine Forsberg—most likely virtually—
to talk with attendees at Summer II. The timing couldn’t be better since Forsberg, who is practically the definition of a hometown girl made good, recently returned to the Great White Way to resume her breakout role in the hit musical Six.
The Summer II class will even perform some selections from that rock-concert-style musical as part of its Saturday showcase. Valuable lesson learned: Every success story starts somewhere, so why not here? And what time better than the present?
Winter Park High School Ninth Grade Center is located at 528 Huntington Avenue, Winter Park. For more information, call or visit the website.
