ARTICLE: La Jolla Music Society’s Educational and Community Outreach Thrives Online
Ken Herman
February 23, 2021
With headliners such as Wynton Marsalis and the Joffrey Ballet on the La Jolla Music Society’s virtual marquee, the company’s community outreach and educational programs strive mightily for public attention.
“They are our best kept secret and success story,” says Leah Rosenthal, the company’s Director of Programming.
“As we see it, anyone from Kindergarten through grey can be a student,” observed Allison Boles, the Music Society’s Education and Community Programming Manager. But the focus of the company’s programming has been on middle school and high school students.
“For 20 years, we have provided an after school music center at the Logan Memorial Educational Campus. Not only do we offer fee music instruction—when the students have met certain milestones, they get to keep their instruments,” Boles explained. “We believe this is the longest running after school program of its kind in the county with bilingual, Spanish and English, staff instruction.”
Of course, when the pandemic brought classroom teaching to a halt, this music program had to adapt. “Last April, we knew in order to continue our instruction, we had switch from our ensemble classes to Zoom. So we moved from group instruction to individual instruction; we are able to see each of these students three times a week, and we have experienced a good retention rate in this new format.”