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Spotlight: Central Florida Vocal Arts gets nod for community work

Students perform in one of Central Florida Vocal Arts' community education programs.
Gontran Durocher
/
CFVA
Students perform in one of Central Florida Vocal Arts' community education programs.

It’s already an extraordinary year for Winter Park-based Central Florida Vocal Arts. The non-profit music advocacy and contemporary opera performance group has been named Community Organization of the Year by the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce. The award ceremony is tonight.

Also, Central Florida Vocal Arts’ founder and executive director Theresa Smith-Levin has just been named to the Orlando Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 list of top professional up-and-comers in the area.

Smith-Levin says music opens the door for young people to find their authentic selves and build confidence as they head into the wider world.

She also says she was a bit surprised at first by news of her recognition.

“I received a text message from a friend announcing congratulations. I wasn't sure for quite what,” Smith-Levin laughed.

The next day, she said, the organization learned of the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce Award.

Central Florida Vocal Arts’ community work approaches music as a tool for advocacy.

“We do a lot of different work to make sure that we can use powerful performing arts experiences to create a better community,” Smith-Levin said. “Sometimes that looks like our Arts One-to-One program, partnering with Orange County Public Schools to ensure that students in poverty situations, in Title 1 school settings, are able to access individual music lessons that otherwise would be cost prohibitive…because we know that the impact of that goes far beyond music. It's much deeper than music itself.”

This helps illustrate CFVA’s philosophy, explained Smith-Levin.

“Through music lessons, these students are learning to believe in themselves, to cultivate confidence,” she said. “And to have an adult mentor that engages with them and sees them and appreciates their innate value, helps them to aspire to greatness, to lean into all that they are capable of being. And we believe that that investment in our youth is an investment in the future of our community.”

Of course, Central Florida Vocal Arts is still a vocal performance troupe. But even in its mainstage productions, community awareness is found.

“Our next full production is in April. That's ‘The Ballad of Baby Doe,’ which is a contemporary American opera. I do not believe that has been done in Orlando ever, so it will be a Central Florida premiere,” Smith-Levin said. “And we're going to be partnering with the Modern Widows Club, that's another nonprofit organization that helps support widowhood in our community, and reimagining the face of what it means to be a widow, and supporting women who are going through that journey.”

On CFVA’s February agenda is a six-week vocal class at the Art and History Museums of Maitland. “It's aimed at teens in middle and early high school in the Maitland/Winter Park/Eatonville area, and it is completely free,” she said. “And at the center of that work is building confidence and youth mental health outcomes through the study of voice and singing.”

Nicole came to Central Florida to attend Rollins College and started working for Orlando’s ABC News Radio affiliate shortly after graduation. She joined Central Florida Public Media in 2010. As a field reporter, news anchor and radio show host in the City Beautiful, she has covered everything from local arts to national elections, from extraordinary hurricanes to historic space flights, from the people and procedures of Florida’s justice system to the changing face of the state’s economy.