Musical Bridges reaches over 50,000 students annually in Title I schools through Kids to Concerts, a free community educational outreach program. Many guest artists of the 5th International Music festival also performed for San Antonio school children as part of this initiative.
During the festival we also had Pingtan artists from our Friendship
City – Suzhou, China perform at two festival concerts, as well as for 2000 students during Kids To Concerts. The two beautiful Pipa players did not speak English. In order to accommodate them, Jason Tatman a Chinese translator from Seattle joined us and shared:
When we went to Criwald Road Elementary. I distinctly remember a little girl asking Zhang Jianzhen where she learned to play the Pipa because she, herself wanted to learn. The same girl came up while the kids were meeting the musicians and told Jianzhen that she wanted to grow up and be just like her. This girl was caught in the beauty and universal language of music and saw no cultural or regional barriers.