Cougars & Mustangs 

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Summer is icumen in, but that doesn’t mean the music events stop happening. Why, Resonance Vocal Ensemble, for example, has a concert on Aug. 9, though I’ll talk much more about it when we get closer. And, really, is it any surprise that the song doesn’t end? Let’s be honest here.

Music is one of the greatest of all expressions of the human soul. It is understood in any language. Practice and performance of it brings people together who might never have met otherwise, or at least spent enough time around one another to really get close. Music can be rousing, it can sobering, it can even be frightening, and yet there it is—as important and engrossing as it ever can and will be. I wouldn’t be who and where I am without it, and I imagine the same can be said for many of you.

Those who teach us song, be they parents, friends, or what have you, these can be some of the most important people we meet … and, Cal Poly announced that one such person is being recognized for her outstanding work by a very notable organization! Jacalyn Kreitzer, a Cal Poly music professor, is being honored by the Recording Academy and Grammy Foundation. She has been selected as a quarterfinalist for the Music Educator Award, one of 222 trimmed down from an astounding 7,000 national submissions. The Music Educator Award exists to recognize music educators anywhere from kindergarten through higher education “who have made a significant and lasting contribution to the field of music education and who demonstrate a commitment to the broader cause of maintaining music education in the schools.” Now that quarterfinalists have been chosen, the 222 will be trimmed down even further to 10 finalists, each of which will receive for their school a matching grant to the $10,000 honorarium the winner recieves during Grammy Week 2015.

Kreitzer has been a teacher of applied voice and performance at Cal Poly for 19 years, also conducting private voice lessons, and she even works to repair damaged voices. She has produced several operas such as Haydn’s The Apothecary, Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, and Purcell’s Dido and Aneas, after all, she is a founder of the Cal Poly Student Opera Theatre! She has also performed at many notable places herself, such as with Deutsche Oper Berlin, Gran Teatre de Liceu, the Minnesota Symphony, and many others. She also serves as artistic advisor for Opera San Luis Obispo. Congratulations to you! Thanks for helping our town keep its astonishingly rich music scene, and brightening the lives of your students!

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