World Music Spring 2022 ODC Theater Performances

The World Music program at Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts (SOTA) needs your help. Due to the pandemic restrictions on performances, students have lost 2 years of performing and we are back! This time with your help!  This year’s spring performance, entitled - Ganbatte! - is being held off-campus at the ODC Theater in San Francisco’s Mission District.

 

Renting a professional theater is expensive, and that is where you come in. The four performances will run from Thursday, 5/19, through Sunday, 5/22. Please support us in offering reasonably priced tickets for students and families, a free afternoon show for SFUSD students, and meals and transportation for our student musicians.

 

This show enables our students and families to attend a world-class public high school music performance in a professional setting with enough seating for all our guests, including a matinee performance free for all San Francisco Unified School District students.

 

 Director Monina Sen Cervone founded the World Music program at Ruth Asawa School of The Arts (SOTA)  in 2012 with what started as an elective beginning Taiko Class in 2006. She expanded SOTA’s classical European arts focus to represent more worldly music disciplines, especially relevant today in a city as diverse as San Francisco. The World Music Program is now one of the most dynamic departments on campus, and the first at Asawa SOTA to open its doors to all students, including those who have not received any formal music training.

The World Music program began with a few old car tires for drums and now boasts an instrument inventory of over 100 Japanese, African and steel-pan drums, ukuleles and a myriad of percussion instruments.  Students in the World Music Department study the folkloric percussion traditions of Japanese Taiko, West African, Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Cuban drumming, Balinese Gamelan and Chant, Philippine Kulintang, Steel Pan and Ukulele. This year’s 2021-2022 Artists-in-Residence include Bong Sidibe - West African, Victorino Cartagena - & Pedro Gomez - Afro-Brazilian, Galen Rogers - Taiko.  Director Cervone was honored in 2020 with the SFUSD Visual And Performing Arts Department DreamCatcher Award, and in 2018 received Teacher of the Month award from 826 Valencia.  

 

Tickets go on sale April 22nd at ODC!