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We’re back! A full Season of Entertainment is programmed at the Al Larson Prairie Center for the Arts for 2022-2023. Believe it or not, ticket prices only cover about half the cost of bringing great performances to the Prairie Center. Your contribution to our season of performing arts helps offset expenses, keeping tickets affordable, and ensuring the growth and excellence of performing arts in our community.
All children should have the opportunity to learn and grow as individuals, and pursue their passions,
regardless of financial barriers. The Young Artists Assistance Program offers tuition assistance to
talented students in need, so they may participate in the Schaumburg Youth Orchestra, Schaumburg Youth Choir, or Schaumburg Dance Ensemble.
Students and their parents or guardians must apply for assistance annually. Tuition assistance, if
awarded, will fund up to 75% of the student’s youth program tuition for the year. All information is kept private and confidential.
Screen Test Student Fest is the Chicago area’s premiere festival dedicated to exhibiting short films made by students in grades K – 12. Films are selected and awarded by a panel of judges.
The first annual festival was held in February, 2007. The number of submissions has quadrupled over the years to include a variety of genres and styles, including stop action animation, war films, issue-driven documentaries, and experimental films.
In 2015, Screen Test began accepting submissions from throughout the U.S. and overseas, making it a truly international festival. All filmmakers participate in the fest, either in person or via live internet video connection.
For more than 25 years, Schaumburg Dance Ensemble’s production of the Nutcracker has been delighting audiences across multiple generations. The Nutcracker features more than 100 students and professional dancers, beautiful choreography, stunning costumes, colorful sets, and live narration. Professional dancers from the American Ballet Theatre, Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, Cincinnati Ballet, Hubbard Street Dance Company, and Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre have graced this production over the years. Student dancers come from far and wide to audition for the opportunity to perform with accomplished dancers in this highly professional production.
The Nutcracker has grown in popularity since its beginnings, with additional performances added to include ten public shows, and two abridged presentations for area school children. Dancers and audiences alike are enriched by the artistry and history of this classic ballet.
The Schaumburg Choral Program is a recreational and educational outlet for talented singers, open to students and adults.
Members meet once weekly at the Prairie Center for the Arts to rehearse choral repertoire. The ensembles present concerts at the Prairie Center and for the community throughout the area. They have performed for the Chicago Bulls, Schaumburg Boomers, the Harlem Globetrotters, and at Chicago’s Symphony Center for the Schaumburg Youth Orchestra’s 25th Anniversary Gala Concert.
The SCP is comprised of four performing ensembles:
Prelude – Open to all students in grades 3 and up, this choir trains our youngest singers. Focus is on singing technique, beginning sight-singing skills, unison and beginning two-part singing, and developing a life-long joy and love of singing.
Cantabile – Open to students in grades 6 through high school that demonstrate strong vocal technique and independent beginning sight-singing skills. Students learn more challenging sight-singing skills, vocal technique, and perform unison, 2-part, and 3-part choral repertoire.
Schaumburg Choral Artists and SCA2 – Formed in 2022, the Schaumburg Choral Artists is a new vocal ensemble providing a unique choral opportunity for advanced adult singers in the Chicago northwest suburbs and outlying communities. SCA2, designed as an apprentice program for SCA and mentored by SCA members, is open to high school students developing their vocal skills.
What began as a 16-member string ensemble in the Spring of 1989 has developed into four orchestras featuring student musicians from Chicago’s northwest suburbs.
The Schaumburg Youth Orchestra performs spring and winter concerts at the Schaumburg Prairie Center for the Arts, its rehearsal and performance base, and throughout the community. The advanced-level Schaumburg Youth Symphony Orchestra has toured overseas to perform in Japan, Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Paris and London. The Symphony Orchestra also recorded three compact discs: The Birth of a Millennium, which was distributed to parents of infants born in area hospitals in the year 2000, the Songs of Good Cheer holiday CD, and a recording of American compositions entitled Prairie Music. In 2010, the program celebrated its 20th anniversary with a gala concert at Chicago’s Symphony Center and returned there in 2014 for a 25th anniversary performance.
The program’s long-term goal of a classical masterworks collaboration between the Schaumburg Youth Orchestra and Choral Program came to fruition in the fall of 2022 with the performance of Brahms’ symphonic choral composition, Schicksalslied.
The orchestras exist as an adjunct to school music programs — all orchestra members play in their school orchestra or band.
The Schaumburg Youth Orchestra was awarded Youth Orchestra of the Year for 2001 and 2008 by the Illinois Council of Orchestras. In 2014, the ICO also named Symphony Orchestra Director Joseph Malmquist Youth Orchestra Conductor of the Year.
…the seasonal act to beat.” Pioneer Press
The Schaumburg Summer Theatre, sponsored by the Village of Schaumburg, presents full-scale musicals featuring the talents of high school and college students from the northwest suburbs.
The Summer Theatre’s first production of Bye Bye Birdie in 1989 featured 35 actors, singers, and dancers, and played for three performances over one weekend. Since then, the number of performances has increased to four over two weekends, with casts that have boasted as many as 70 students. Past productions have included Anything Goes, Can Can, Guys and Dolls, Damn Yankees, Brigadoon, Oliver, The Pirates of Penzance, West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, Ragtime, and last summer’s staging of The SpongeBob Musical.
The program has garnered tremendous box office success, often playing to sold out houses. The shows have also become critical hits, earning several Pioneer Press Boonie Awards in recognition for outstanding community theatre in the northwest suburbs. Many Summer Theatre alumni have gone on to professional careers, including Broadway, network television, film, opera and dance. The program can also boast one Tony Award winner among its alumni.
Actors, singers, and dancers are cast by audition, held around Memorial Day weekend.
Rehearsals and performances are held at the Al Larson Prairie Center for the Arts.