School Music Grant Awarded

To help support the important work and profound need of our school music community, we are happy to create GTCYS’ first-ever School Music Grant – a $1,000 grant for a Twin Cities public school orchestra or band program to use for instruments, music, or supplies. After opening the nomination form last month, we received 77 nominations from 43 schools. We were heartened by the stories and moved by the vast need.

This year’s grant recipient was announced by GTCYS conductor Mary Sorlie at our Orchestrating Opportunities benefit last Sunday. We’re pleased that this year’s recipient is South High School (Minneapolis) whose band and orchestras are led by Sophia Butler!

Sophia shared, “Amidst huge cuts to our staff in the arts last year, I have had to consolidate my ensembles, meaning I have a greater need for multi-level and FLEX repertoire that is accessible to many different ability levels and instrumentations of each group. As our district continues to shift programming due to redistricting policy, I will be investing in culturally sustaining repertoire that can meet these diverse needs, and new cello strings! There are so many cellos that I haven’t been able to replace D or A strings on because they are so expensive! Many thanks to GTCYS for investing in public school music education!”

When school programs thrive, the entire music community thrives, and GTCYS looks forward to making this an annual tradition!