From our president

Thursday Musical is pleased to announce that our Thursday Musical Young Artist Scholarship Competition will go forward this year, but in a different form. We are entering new territory! Due to the Coronavirus we will be going on-line with our competition. Unfortunately student recitals will not be held as in years past. We do hope, however, to have a virtual Student Winners’ Concert in mid-April by our first-place winners!

Students need to apply on-line by January 29, 2021 and submit their video performances for the competition by February 19, 2021. Please encourage students to apply. Registration is now open online and competition rules are available on our website at thursdaymusical.org.

A second change is that students, if they need an accompanist, may use various ways to record their competition submissions. A couple of choices include using accompanists wearing masks socially distanced or having an accompanist send a pre-recorded accompaniment to the student who then records their selection to this accompaniment. For the first time SmartMusic and other electronic accompaniments will be acceptable. From these various ways of recording the judges will choose the scholarship winners.

We hope that this new way of holding a competition will allow us to still support our community’s students with scholarship opportunities. Up to $20,000 may be awarded this year for students in middle school (grades 7-8), high school (grades 9-12) and college (up to age 25 on 2/1/21).

Welcome to Aja Majkrzak, Thursday Musical’s New VP Artist Series!

Aja Majkrzak has joined the Executive Board of Thursday Musical and will be helping schedule the remaining Artist Series Concerts of the rest of the season. Aja is a recent new Thursday Musical member and currently teaches Suzuki violin at the St. Paul Conservatory of Music. Growing up in the Twin Cities area, she received her Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Minnesota and traveled South to study with Espen Lilleslatten at Louisiana State University for her Master of Music degree. Since then she has performed with several regional orchestras and is an active violinist in the local music scene including the Latin jazz group Charanga Tropical which traveled to Cuba in 2015 to participate in the International Danzon Festival.