UTEP Performers to Nourish Community with Music
Last Updated on November 05, 2019 at 12:00 AM
Originally published November 05, 2019
By UC Staff
UTEP Communications
Musicians with ties to The University of Texas at El Paso will perform at various locations around the region the week of Nov. 4, 2019, as part of Nour·ish, a national effort to engage communities through music.
Students and faculty members from UTEP’s Department of Music, along with artists from its affiliated Center for Arts Entrepreneurship (CAE), as well as El Paso Pro-Musica (EPPM) and the El Paso Symphony Orchestra (EPSO) agreed to share their talents.
For example, Steve Wilson, DMA, UTEP Department of Music chair and professor of trombone, will perform as a member of the UTEP Faculty Brass Quintet at 3 p.m. Friday, Nov. 8, 2019, at La Fe Cultural and Technology Center, 721 S. Ochoa St. Another noteworthy performance will be at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 5, at Guillen Middle School, 900 S. Cotton St. This will be a collaboration with EPSO string instrument musicians.
Organizers continued to work on the schedule but said that musicians would perform at schools, hospitals, the El Paso Museum of Art and at a music school in Juárez. Some musicians also will play at senior centers and cafes.
“We’re going to be everywhere,” said Felipa Solis, executive director of EPPM and a Nour·ish organizer along with Wilson.
Solis said that the lead performers would be the Bergamot String Quartet from the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. The group consists of doctoral students who will spend part of the week working with UTEP graduate students as part of a CAE residency. The group will perform at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 7, 2019, at the Southwest Women’s Leadership Institute Conference at the Region 19 Conference Center, 11670 Chito Samaniego.
Wilson, whose ensemble will perform several times as part of Nour·ish, said he was pleased that so many of his student and professional peers wanted to participate in Nour·ish.
“The University’s goal was to engage the border community with music and we feel that we will do a great job with that,” Wilson said. “Our goal is to perform for critically underserved children on the border.”
UTEP is part of a consortium of conservatories, music institutions and college music departments spread across the country participating in Nour·ish. The group consists of the DePauw School of Music (Indiana), New England Conservatory (Massachusetts), Peabody Institute (Maryland), Indiana University’s Jacob School of Music, the University of Colorado – Boulder, and the University of South Carolina’s School of Music.
Organizers encouraged the institutions to schedule events specifically for their communities. Some planned to focus their performances in jails or children’s hospitals.