Good News! Professor Eunice Williams reports that on April 26, Cedar Center Chorus hosted the 18th Annual Festival in Balboa Park, initially called Creative Concepts. Thanks to Minnie Swanson, a former Cedar Center Chorus member, this is all paid for by her bequest. It is a wonderful opportunity for many SDCCD performing and art classes to share their achievements and invite Balboa Park visitors to attend our classes. This has proven to be a great outreach for SDCCD-CE, providing the impetus for many new students to enroll.
Sunday was really a fabulous day! Pam Kozminska came down for awhile, along with her co-teacher, the other Pam. The art pieces were all very interesting to everybody. We had our best attendance ever. Stewart Shaw did a great job as Festival Coordinator, as usual.
ALL the groups did better than they have ever done. Melodiers, Choraleers & Serra-Naders, Rey Vinole’s Monday night Big Band & his Dixieland Band and Jim Trepasso’s SD Mandolin Orchestra. (Gene, the founding director, is soon to be 100 and he conducted several pieces!) Cedar Center Chorus & Pacificaires sang a rousing patriotic number with the Mandolin Orchestra, Jim Trepasso, conducting. (He sent me a recording of the group playing the medley, so we rehearsed with the recording, AND he also came to one of our rehearsals.) Just so the singers could become accustomed to his conducting style. Other teachers included Lorea Herald, Esther Segal, Vicki Heins-Shaw, Naomi Hobbs and me, Eunice Williams.
Some good news for the NOTEables and for the SDCCD–CE Music. The NOTEables have been asked to perform at the annual NeuroSciences Institute Gala: Minding the Arts. It is a benefit for NSI and their auditorium, which they provide free of charge to many of the great performance groups in the city, including the SD Chamber Orchestra, The Mainly Mozart Festival, the Athenaeum, and of course the NOTEables. (Their website is NSI.edu, where you can read their mission statement regarding their research on music and the brain.)
