Cast and crew of “The Quilt” film speak during a Q&A session following the screening premiere. © 2023 Robert Michaelson “The Quilt: A Living History of African American Music”, an educational documentary produced by Musical Bridges Around the World, had a full house for its red carpet premiere at the Jo Long Theatre of the Carver Community Cultural Center. The venue is also the same location where all of the onscreen dialogue and some of the film’s musical performances were filmed, with the rest being captured at Texas Public Radio’s Malú and Carlos Alvarez Theater & Studio. Community is a big...

A History by Anya Grokhovski, DMA, MBAW CEO, Founder & Artistic Director The beginning of Musical Bridges Around the World’s educational programs started at the oldest official venue for Mexican culture in the U.S., Instituto Cultural de Mexico. We’ve always had an excellent relationship with this gem of a space in San Antonio. It’s the largest cultural arm of Mexico in the country, outside of Washington, DC. The performance hall seats about 180 people, and our first audiences were children from surrounding schools who walked to the concerts with their teachers. As the series grew, we learned that many schools faced logistical...

UTSA’s College of Education & Human Development’s Chris Reichert just published a new online article covering the latest in MBAW’s Musical Sprouts, a FREE educational engagement program providing students the opportunity to travel the world by bringing performing artists and cultural connections to their classrooms. During the past three years, the curriculum portion of the program was also subject to a simultaneous research study put together in partnership with the University of Texas System to determine and prove the impact and efficacy of the program. In this article, Sprouts research assistant and UTSA Department...

Report by Jennifer Reed-Martinez, MBAW Director of Community Engagement This fall, over 3,300 students traveled virtually to Ukraine with our Kids to Concerts program, with a concert video (seen below) by renowned Ukrainian musician Jurij Fedynskyj. During the pandemic, this program had to shift from live in-person concerts to virtual concert videos. And now, as schools move back to a mix of virtual and/or in-classroom learning, the program adapts to meet that change again as our January concerts covering the music of African American culture & history will be live in the schools.  In addition, 650 students received five hands-on,...