Posted by Pamela Arnsberger on May 09, 2019

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS

The club has changed the schedule for our community grants awards this year. We will delay the grant awards until fall of 2019 so that we can determine the exact amount of funds we have to distribute. Watch this site for more information.

Win announced the district conference will be May 18 and 19th at the U.S.S Hornet in Alameda. Go to  www.rotarydistrict5170.org to register.

The fundraiser was a huge success raising approximately $40,000 for Second Harvest and our community grants. Thanks to all of you who worked so hard to make it a success. (P.S.  If you have made a pledge or need to pay for a silent auction item remember to turn the money into Michele as soon as you can!)

Doug announced we will be giving three scholarships to Aptos High School and three to Soquel High School seniors. Congratulations to all recipients!

Sheila Willey was our speaker today. She is the artistic director of opera at UCSC. She also appears with Santa Cruz Chamber Players and other local groups and has sung diverse roles throughout the Bay area. She is currently preparing the Pirates of Penzance which is opening May 30th.

 

 

She spoke to us about what is happening at UCSC. One activity is "lunching with Mozart" at noon at the public library. She explained that music is not a big emphasis at UCSC but the voice can develop after college years so the students can just go up and audition and those with some aptitude can be admitted. She said they focus on operas requiring smaller orchestras.  They have a wonderful music center there which is a nice size hall of about 400 seats. Each year they do a fully staged opera and they are the only group locally to do that.

She described the process of design as well as costumes and make-up. All of these efforts are donor funded. They also do a children’s or family opera once a year.

They offer a BA in music as well as a bachelor’s degree in music which is more performance based. She described some of the careers her students have achieved. She concluded by singing us a few bars of a solo from Pirates of Penzance.

For information on tickets to pirates of penzance go to ucsctickets.com.