We celebrated our milestone 20th season with our 20th Anniversary Celebration Concert on March 9 at Santa Monica’s Barnum Hall.
To start things off, we were delighted to have groups from our Chamber Music Institute give pre-concert performances outside of Barnum while guests waited in ticket lines.
The concert was nearly sold-out, and featured the 300 student musicians in our large ensemble programs for choir, strings, classical guitar, concert band, and full orchestra! The Mayor of Santa Monica was even there to present a commendation to us in honor of our 20th season.
The concert was very special for Elemental Music because it was the first time that all of our large ensembles performed together in the same concert! This was an incredible feat of coordination and effort on behalf of our staff, as well as our amazing and dedicated volunteers who made sure the event ran smoothly.
Highlights of the concert included:
100 young choral singers performing together on stage
An interdisciplinary collaboration between Academy Philharmonic and Ballet Folklórico Flor de Mayo
The world premiere of Edna Alejandra Longoria’s Pizzicato Time by Broadway Strings and Prelude!
Videos of all the performances can be found here.
At our post-concert reception, families had fun at an activity booth hosted by our friends at ReDiscover Center. The reception again was made possible thanks to the help of many volunteers who brought food and supplies for the potluck, set everything up, distributed goody bags, and more.
Volunteer superstar Kim Crawford even decorated custom cookies for our student goody bags as well as custom cakes! The reception was the perfect way to end our event – what a special community we have.
Thank you to all who came out and celebrated two decades of Elemental Music! More than 3,000 students have participated in our programs since 2004 and we are so excited for the future.