The Seattle Youth Music Festival is a student-run music festival project as a part of the Chinese American Civic Association’s Youth Leadership Enhancement Program. It is founded and led by Corey Zhang and run by three other students: Katie Meng, Fiona Xie, and Nigel Cao. All our team members are involved in music, so we wanted to work towards giving the opportunity for youth in the Seattle area to share their passion and dedication for their musical pursuits by inviting them to perform at annual senior center recitals. As music has been proven to be beneficial to the human psyche, we are also hoping to entertain the elders the youth are performing for.
The first part of this music festival is online, where performers submit a recording of a performance for any musical instrument or vocal piece on a form. This year, our online submission phase was in early November 2022 and we received and judged the submissions of a multitude of young musical artists with a variety of instruments, including flute, string, piano, and vocal performances. The gold, silver, and bronze medalists of the festival were judged and selected by music teachers. They were also funded by CACA with a fixed amount of money based on their standings that will then be donated to a senior center on their behalf.
The Seattle Youth Music Festival had a very successful first recital for the seniors at Timber Ridge at Talus on Sunday, 1/22. Our recital featured 26 talented musicians from our online submissions. We had the pleasure of entertaining over 200 senior residents and parents while presenting a $570 donation on behalf of the medalists to the Director of Philanthropy, Jessica Wong, of the Kin On senior center. All performers were awarded for their dedication to music with an award certificate and prize in our award ceremony.
Thank you to Timber Ridge at Talus and the Community Life Services Director Diane Mortenson for cooperating with us to plan for this event and providing us with an excellent performance space for our participants to share their music with your residents. It is our pleasure to be one of the projects in CACA’s Youth Leadership Enhancement Program and to give young musicians an opportunity to help and provide an amazing musical experience to the community. We are excited to continue working as one of CACA’s projects to expand the work that we are doing to provide music-related opportunities and entertainment to a larger community.
