The San Francisco Community Music Center celebrated its 90th birthday Oct. 16 with a festive party at the school on. Located at 544 Capp St., the Community Music Center’s mission is to make music education easily accessible to San Francisco and Bay Area residents.
It offers a broad range of music classes and private lessons for students without regard to their economic situation. The music education offered at the Community Music Center covers a wide diversity of musical genres including: classical, popular, Latino and Hispanic, flamenco, Cuban, jazz and blues. Approximately 20 percent of CMC students are Latino. About 24 percent of the students under 18 are Latino.
“For 90 years, the Community Music Center has had its main branch in the middle of the Mission District,” Chus Alonso, program director and faculty member at the CMC said. “During this time, the CMC has changed with the neighborhood and has adapted to better serve the surrounding population. Particularly in the last decade, the Community Music Center has been working on developing stronger ties with the neighborhood.”
The 90th birthday celebration featured beautiful musical performances by Community Music Center students and faculty. Martha Rodriguez-Salazar and Lichi Fuentes led the students in the “Latin Vocal Workshop,” “Coro Solera” and “el Coro de la 30.” Rodriguez-Salazar also conducted the chorus for seniors. Omar Ledezma conducted the Latin percussion ensemble, while Beth Wilmurt led the children’s chorus. There was a swinging “Jazz Jam” with Richard Saunders, Randy Craig and Eric Garland. Ellen Robinson led the “Anything Goes Chorus.” Loretta Taylor conducted the Chamber Music Orchestra in a delightful performance of Luigi Boccherini’s “String Quartet Minuet.”
There were also other faculty members of the Community Music Center at the party who showed the celebrants how to play the different musical instruments: woodwind, percussion, accordion, guitar, banjo, mandolin, violin, viola, cello, trumpet, clarinet, flute, saxophone, drum and piano and an instrument we all possess—the human voice.
The Community Music Center offers classes and lessons for all ages. Its rich curriculum includes the Mission District Young Musicians Program, which serves primarily Latino students from low-income families in the Mission, the Comprehensive Musicianship Program and the Inner City Young Musicianship Program.
Other programs include Latin-flamenco ensemble Potingue, jazz bands, classical music classes and performance groups.
The afternoon birthday celebration culminated in a highly energetic, inspirational and moving performance by the students in the Mission District Young Musicians Program, conducted by Chus Alonso and Martha Rodriguez-Salazar. It was followed by a dance party featuring the music of Potingue, led by Alonso.
“The Community Music Center is proud of its 90-year history of making music accessible to the people of the Bay Area, and looks forward to the next 90,” said Stephen Shapiro, who’s been the executive director at the Community Music Center for the past 33 years and is retiring this month states. “We’d like our community to know that this is their music center and that everyone is welcome here. It is never too late to learn how to make music.”
“I am most grateful for the opportunity for the past 33 years of getting up in the morning and going to work at a place that I love and respect. The Community Music Center has a wonderful mission of accessibility, diversity and quality, and I’m proud to have been a part of it,” Shapiro said.
“As one of the city’s oldest arts organizations, the Community Music Center enters its ninth decade with a rich and vibrant history and remains fully committed to its founding mission that has provided generations of San Franciscans with access and opportunity as music students and audience members,” Christopher Borg, a viola player and former director of the music department at the famed Groton School in Massachusetts, who will succeed Shapiro as the new executive director at the CMC. “Joining this community is a personal homecoming, as it was at an urban school very similar to CMC where I began my musical training.”
For more information and to register for music classes, please contact:
San Francisco Community Music Center
544 Capp Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 647-6015
www.sfcmc.org
For another perspective on CMC’s 90th birthday read “Blues in F Major” by Jeffrey Minh.