The Festival’s Education Department has had a busy year filled with various events and milestones that have demonstrated the enduring power of music education and its ability to impact students’ lives for the better.
On May 6, we presented our first-ever Virtual Violin Spotlight—an online concert (see above) that featured performances by students who participate in our Strings in Our Schools program at four elementary schools (three in Santa Fe and one in Pecos).
Capital High School graduating seniors Manuel Bojorquez, tuba; Mariajosé Garcia Madrid, viola; and Lourdes Armenta Cazares, viola
Less than two weeks later, on May 17, we presented another first: an online concert called Dream Big Youth Music, which showcased the talents of 15 students in our Dream Big Private Lesson Program at Santa Fe’s Ortiz Middle School and Capital High School. The students proudly demonstrated the progress they made this past year thanks to their own hard work and the dedication of our Dream Big private instructors. Capital High School graduating seniors who performed in the concert include Nicole Bernal, violin; Jazmin Jacquez-Hernandez, flute; Mateo Muñoz, clarinet; and three students who were accepted to the University of New Mexico as music majors: Manuel Bojorquez, tuba; Lourdes Armenta Cazares, viola; and Mariajosé Garcia Madrid, viola.
For the spring semester of Music in Our Schools, the Festival provided the program’s teachers—who teach pre-K and K–6—a musically diverse curriculum that focused on instruments such as the marimba, xylophone, trap set, and steel-pan drum as well as music by Irving Burgie, Sadie Koninsky, Charles Ignatius Sancho, Francisco Pérez Muñoz, and Irene Mary Giblin O’Brien.
All of the Festival’s education programs contributed to the musical and personal development of many students this past year. Strings in Our Schools and the Dream Big Private Lesson Program served 32 elementary school students and 27 middle school and high school students, respectively, while Music in Our Schools served more than 8,000 students in 28 schools in Santa Fe and northern New Mexico.
Dream Big is very generously sponsored by Enterprise Bank & Trust and The Fasken Foundation. All of us at the Festival offer our heartfelt thanks to them and to everyone who supports our music education programs.
