Villa Musica & La Jolla Symphony & Chorus Partner For Carnegie Hall's Link Up Program

In collaboration with Carnegie Hall, Villa Musica and La Jolla Symphony and Chorus have partnered for the second year in a row to participate in Link Up, a music education program provided by Carnegie Hall's Weill Music Institute (WMI), during the 2023-2024 season.

Over 375 students participating in the Link Up curriculum will attend a culminating concert on May 11th at 2:00pm at the Epstein Family Amphitheater, UC San Diego where they will sing and play the recorder with the orchestra from their seats. This experience often serves as a students' first concert experience and provides them with the opportunity to apply the musical concepts they have studied in class during the academic year. Reserve tickets here. 

For more than 35 years, Link Up has paired orchestras with students in grades 3–5 at schools in their local communities to explore orchestral repertoire and fundamental musical skills, including creative work and composition, through a hands-on music curriculum. Link Up addresses the urgent need for music instruction and resources by providing a free, high quality, year-long curriculum that teachers can implement, along with classroom materials, online video and audio resources, and the professional development and support necessary to make the program an engaging experience for students.  

Villa Musica and La Jolla Symphony and Chorus are two of over 100 national and international organizations participating in this program. Since 2003, Carnegie Hall has partnered with professional, community, and university orchestras across the US and around the world to support their existing education programs and strengthen their partnerships with local schools. In 2023-2024, Link Up will partner with sites in the US, as well as in Canada, China, Dominican Republic, Spain, Kenya, New Zealand, and Japan, to serve more than 300,000 students and teachers globally. Visit carnegiehall.org/LinkUp for a complete list of participants and further details.

Villa Musica Community Interim Executive Director,  Aaron Bullard, shared “This is the second year that Villa Musica has partnered with La Jolla Symphony & Chorus to bring Carnegie Hall's Link Up program to students in San Diego. With support from The California Arts Council and The National Endowment for the Arts, we have more than doubled our impact from last year; we have over 375 students participating across 9 schools. Since the beginning of this school year, Villa Musica faculty have been going to 3rd and 4th grade classrooms each week in partnering schools to teach children how to play recorder and sing, while learning a variety of essential rhythmic and structural concepts. Students from across San Diego will come together with one culminating concert where they will play, sing, and dance along with the La Jolla Symphony in front of an audience of around 1,000 friends and family members. We are so excited to have this performance taking place in the new Epstein Family Amphitheater, not only because the state-of-the-art facility will give the participants a fantastic performance experience, but also because it is easily accessible for families to get there via public transportation (and Villa Musica's mission is centered around access to music education). What makes this program even more special is how it aligns and supports existing music education in the schools. We specifically offer Link Up to the younger grade levels that have not started music yet, which means when district teachers see these kids next year, they will not be starting from scratch and can go even further in their music education. This effect will compound year over year as these kids progress to middle and high school, and we want to expand even more next year!”

Executive Director of La Jolla Symphony and Chorus, Stephanie Weaver added “We at the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus are thrilled to be partnering with Villa Musica again to present this unique and inspiring experience for our San Diego students and their families. The union of our two organizations creates an ideal ecosystem of music education and performance, planting the seeds for a lifelong relationship with music in our young students. The Link Up program offers children and their families the opportunity not just to experience excellent orchestral and choral music as listeners, but also to actively participate in the concert process as performers and musicians themselves.”

The Program performed by La Jolla Symphony and Chorus, and accompanied by the children participating in Link Up Includes

• "Come to Play" by Thomas Cabaniss
• "New World Symphony" by Antonín Dvořák
• "Ram Tori Maya" by Reena Esmail
• "Finale from the Firebird Suite" by Igor Stravinsky
• "We Shall Not be Moved" arr. Natalie Joachim
• "Ode to Joy" by Ludwig van Beethoven
• "Oye" by Jim Papoulis

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