Partnered with the La Jolla Symphony Orchestra, Villa Musica is excited to be the first organization to bring Link Up, Carnegie Hall to San Diego, now in our 3rd season!
Villa Musica’s Teaching Artists teach weekly classes inside 3rd and 4th grade classrooms, bringing Carnegie Hall’s Link Up curriculum to life. Students are given a recorder and yearlong music instruction in which they learn to sing and play an instrument in their own classroom, and the opportunity to join the La Jolla Symphony for a highly participatory end-of-year concert.
Year Three: The Orchestra Moves II
Our current year, and third season of Link Up brings a new twist to our favorite concert, boasting repertoire from nine living composers for students to absorb, sing, and play on their recorders. Six of Villa Musica’s Teaching Artists are excited to begin class in September 2024, and the La Jolla Symphony is looking forward to sending their musicians to the classroom for “Meet the Orchestra” days.
Year Two: The Orchestra Sings
The second year of Link Up brought more in-depth learning to our returning schools, and five new schools! Returning schools showed an increase in camaraderie and confidence, quicker understanding of new concepts, and impressive note reading and music literacy. New schools saw the excitement that was awaiting them at the end of the year and jumped on the Link Up learning train! All schools provided access to a combined 400 students to attend the La Jolla Symphony’s Link Up performance at the Epstein Family Theater.
Year One: The Orchestra Moves
For the 2022/23 academic year, our pilot event “The Orchestra Moves” was an interactive concert where students from San Diego Unified (3rd – 4th grade) played their recorders, sang, and danced with a full symphony orchestra. Over 200 students from Carson, Carver, Chesterton, and Linda Vista Elementary schools participated in this exciting initial year.
With funding from the California Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Tippett Foundation, and Qualcomm, we expanded to 9 schools for the 2023/24 academic year, and culminated with”The Orchestra Sings” on Saturday, May 11th, 2023.
Interested in getting your school involved with our next Link Up project?
Please reach out to:
Director of Community Partnerships:
Aaron Bullard – abullard@villamusica.org
