Our second annual showcase featuring the Harlem Quartet and Aldo Lopez Gavilan was a fabulous evening! All who played, conducted, volunteered and attended had a stunning time. A number of people in our audience spoke afterwards of the excellence of our students and surprise at the scope of our programs. Our students spoke eloquently about their participation in SFYSA musical ensembles as a support to their learning, success, happiness, and leadership. The performance was excellent, the music fantastic and the after reception at Santa Fe Oxygen and Healing Bar was cozy and elegant. The event was an incredible educational success, a wonderful experience for our kids to work with the inspiration, support and excellence of the Grammy award-winning Harlem Quartet and Aldo Lopez Gavilan. While we created quite a buzz in the community reaching people with our community vision and sharing about our important work, we fell short of our fund raising goals. If you are in a position to join us as a donor and support our continued growth and access for our community to quality music education, please consider making a donation today.

From Sunday through Thursday of the week before our concert, these visiting professionals met with each of our ensembles. They worked on technique, inspired passion for music, and honed the music preparation we’d already begun. The quartet performed for the ensembles, answered questions, shared tips and professional insight, and had fun!

On Thursday, March 1, eight (8) of our Youth Symphony strings players performed at the Lensic with Black Violin for their Simple Gifts encore!  Madelyn Kingston, Lila Baca, Xitlalitl Rodas, Theodore Bloyd, Isabella Clark, Ursula Coe, Angelicia Ochoa-Rivera and Abigail Wilcox. The kids had a great time playing with these crossover rock stars of the classical and hip hop music worlds.