Eastman School of Music Benefit Concert for SMF!
Oct 08, 2010
I absolutely love the Eastman School of Music. The students there are amazingly talented and hardworking. It is the top school of music in the US, the students are completely overwhelmed by how much work they have to do to succeed there, and yet they have formed a club to support the Shropshire Music Foundation, and have raised more money than any other school for us.
They are wonderful. I love them.
Every year I speak to the Freshman Colloquium at Eastman. This very large class is mandatory for all incoming
freshmen and transfer students, so I get to speak to every single Eastman student. I love it. Every year, at the end of the lecture, students ask what they can do to get involved. Three years ago they formed the “EASTMAN FOR SHROPSHIRE MUSIC FOUNDATION” club and they have been extremely active ever since. We are now discussing the possibility of a student group coming to Eastman as a Study/Service Abroad trip. I hope it happens!
Midnight Ramblers Rehearsal
Last Friday, Oct 1, they organized a benefit concert for us. Interestingly, they didn’t have groups from Eastman perform. Rather, they selected two music groups from the University of Rochester’s main campus. (Eastman is part of the U of R)
Liz With Midnight Ramblers After Their Performance
The first group who performed were the MIDNIGHT RAMBLERS, an all-male a cappella group who were not only excellent singers but really fun performers. They are all U of R students. As a part of their set they performed Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” while I showed slides in the background of the wars affects on Kosovo, Uganda and N Ireland.
Walri in Rehearsal
The second group was Rochester’s most popular Independent band WALRI. They are all U of R graduates—two in Physics and two from the Eastman School of Music. Their music is interesting, intelligent, and fun. We couldn’t stop dancing to it from the lobby, where we had a display of photos and information about SMF.
Walri Live at the Concert!
The concert was organized by Garrett Rubin and Hannah Picasso-Hobin. Garrett is the president of the Eastman for SMF club, and came to Kosovo last summer. Hannah did an amazing Senior Project about SMF last summer and taught an entire class how to play pennywhistle. They are both amazing. In addition, there were 8 Eastman students who manned the tickets and helped with everything else. The grand total raised was over $1200. A fantastic amount that will really help us reach more children!!
I still can’t get over these amazing, amazing students. I love them. I hope more universities will get involved with
SMF!