“I have been all over the country and have been to many arts schools, including New York and Chicago…the students at NMSA are truly remarkable.”
-Antonio Trujillo, St. Joseph’s Mission School principal
Last Friday (January 22), NMSA played host to two fantastic New Mexico schools, who visited NMSA, saw our young artists in action, performed with NMSA students, and shared their own art!
Twelve middle-school students from the Rio Gallinas School for Ecology and the Arts (an elementary and middle school charter located in Las Vegas, NM) visited NMSA to attend a Visual Arts Workshop conducted by NMSA instructor Jacob Sisneros. The workshop and presentations centered around 3D printing and sculpting, and elicited enthusiastic responses from the student participants. “I never thought you could do so much with paper,” remarked one student. Another “loved that the workshop was hands on and not just a presentation!”
Also on Friday, St. Joseph’s Mission School, a school near Grants, NM serving pre-K through 8th grade, sent a group of 44 students and 12 educators to visit and perform. The partnership began earlier this school year when NMSA Orchestra Director Carla Lehmeier-Tatum met St. Joseph’s principal – Antonio Trujillo – at the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market while NMSA string quartet performed. The following week Ms. Lehmeier-Tatum and Music Department Chair Neil Swapp visited St. Joseph’s shortly thereafter, and later, Carla taught a strings class for students which included a solo cello work that she performed.
Their visit to NMSA was highly collaborative, spanning different types of art forms and challenging NMSA students to create music themselves Prior to the visit, NMSA students prepared instrumental accompaniment for vocal music that was to be sung by St. Joseph’s students, and then sent St. Joseph’s a recording of the accompaniment for those students to listen to and practice with.
Because the visit came the opening day of NMSA’s Winter Dances, students from St. Joseph’s watched an early afternoon production of Winter Dances at James A. Little Theater, afterwards eating lunch with the Dance Department. They then performed their Butterfly and Reindeer Dance, accompanied by Native American drummers and singers from Laguna and Acoma Pueblos (below!).
Later, the visiting students came to NMSA and performed their choral arrangements with the NMSA string orchestra, a viola soloist, jazz pianist, and NMSA classical vocalists. They sang two more songs with the string orchestra, and one Spanish song acapella.
Click here for a video of the student performance with NMSA musicians and singers!
Following the arts exchange, students participated in a basket gift exchange (below). “I wished I was 40 years younger and had the opportunity to attend this school,” commented Rio Gallinas teacher John Peden. “The program is amazing.”