After two years of research and thoughtful planning, ROCO recently launched a first-of-its-kind, innovative community outreach initiative called Musicians with a Mission (MWM), which reimagines and redesigns the role of a full-time musician within an orchestra. MWM invites individual ROCO musicians to bring together their unique passions and artistic talents to create and run their own access/outreach project under the ROCO umbrella with guidance and oversight from the ROCO team.

Research from the national Advisory Board for the Arts discovered that MWM is a model that does not currently exist within the arts landscape. Most outreach programs are developed by administrative staff and delivered either through that same staff or by teaching artists or emerging, pre-professional artists who are separate from those that audiences typically see on stage for public programming. ROCO will be the first organization to give members of the ensemble the ability to develop and run their own program in their passion of service that will provide a throughline of relationships between the community and the core artists on the stage. 

The opportunity for this new full time role was offered to the core ROCO musicians, four of whom applied. We are delighted to introduce ROCO Principal Clarinetist, Nathan Williams, as our first Musicians with a Mission Manager, who is developing close relationships within the hospice and palliative care communities. He has also joined the Artistic team to amplify ROCO’s continued work in Access and innovative programming. Additionally, Nathan has already found a great connection to the Independent, Assisted Living, and Skilled Nursing communities that are a logical extension of his work.  

MWM is a natural extension of ROCO’s human-first value. Your support will give agency to musicians to continually connect people through the shared language of music.

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Nathan Williams
Musicians with a Mission Manager
[email protected]
231-392-2162