From President Sylvia Wilson:
Preston Duncan, 2021 Teacher of the Year
Thursday Musical members, please join us for the Thursday Musical Winners' Concert this coming Friday, April 23rd on Zoom at 7:00 p.m. Members will receive the Zoom link 24 hours before the event, if you would like to attend and are not a member, please email tara@thursdaymusical.org by Thursday, April 22. The concert will feature the ten first-place winners performing one of their winning selections. We will also honor our 2021 Thursday Musical Teacher of the Year, Preston Duncan, saxophone teacher at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
William Gannon, 1st Place High School Piano
With the many Covid pandemic challenges facing Thursday Musical last fall, we had to get creative. We brainstormed ways that we could make this happen. After researching how several other musical organizations had managed this task, Thursday Musical made the decision to take our Young Artist Scholarship Competition on-line posting the rules on November 30th, 2020. Operations Manager Tara Priolo had the skills to help make the video-submissions possible and judging possible. 140 students registered which is a higher number than we have had for a few years. We hired 18 judges. Tara made instructional videos for both the students and the judges in how to do their tasks. Things ran pretty smoothly and all felt it was very a successful competition. One of the pluses we found was that it allowed both students and judges that lived far away from the Twin Cities area to participate without all the hours of driving.
Olga Kossovich, 1st Place College Strings
Thursday Musical awarded $17,100 in scholarships to 31 students this year. The high levels of student performances never cease to amaze us! This was so successful; we will be evaluating how we may want to run our competitions in the future now that we have tried it this way.
Thanks to all of our members who donated to sponsor or support the scholarships! We champion local music!
ANNUAL MEETING
Please also put our Annual Meeting by Zoom on your calendars for Thursday, May 20 at 10:00 a.m. MacPhail at this time is planning to be open next fall. There is lots of planning to be done. Volunteers will be needed for leadership positions as we move forward to reopening our organization after the pandemic is over. We are especially interested in people with video-editing or social media experience. Please contact President Sylvia Wilson to volunteer at sylvia@thursdaymusical.com in the next two weeks.
THURSDAY MUSICAL MEMBERSHIP DIRECTORY
On-line or printed Thursday Musical directory will be available this week. Tara will send out details soon.