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 was founded and led by Corey Zhang in the summer of 2022 and run by three other students: Katie Meng, Fiona Xie, and Nigel Cao. This music festival is a culmination of our philosophy of uplifting society in the face of social issues and our musical passion to fulfill my mission of bridging generational gaps. In the wake of the pandemic, young musicians faced a void in transformative, in-person musical experiences. Unlike profit-driven events, we prioritized community impact over ticket sales. Corey led a dedicated team of students to address this void by organizing annual senior center recitals, providing a platform for Seattle’s youth to showcase their musical passion while bringing joy to the elders through the universal language of music.
The Seattle Youth Music Festival had a very successful first recital for the seniors at Timber Ridge at Talus on 1/22/2023. The 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. After receiving many compliments from both participants in the festival as well as Diane Mortenson, Timber Ridge at Talus Community Life Services Director, and Jessica Wong, Kin On Director of Philanthropy, expressing their gratitude for the impact of music festival, we decided to initiate the second annual festival again in September 2023.
Just like last year, the first part of this music festival was 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 December 2023 and we received and judged the submissions of a multitude of young musical artists with a wide variety of instruments, including flute, French horn, string, piano, and vocal performances. The gold, silver, and bronze medalists of the festival were judged and selected, and the sponsorship by CACA awarded them with a fixed amount of money based on their standings that was then donated to Kin On on their behalf to show our continued support of the same Chinese American senior citizen community.
Thank you once again to Timber Ridge at Talus and the Community Life Services Director Diane Mortenson for cooperating with us to plan for this event on Sunday, February 4, 2024, and providing us with an excellent performance space for our participants to share their music with your residents for the second recital. We are also honored to be able to support Kin On again through a $730 donation on behalf of our medalists and have the amazing senior community be represented by Rose Ju during our award ceremony. 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.
Deciding to incorporate some of our expansion ideas based on what we thought we could build on from last year’s project, our team worked on an event to foster intergenerational connections which we found was lacking from solely a recital. On Sunday, April 8, 2024, we launched the intergenerational music workshop for seniors at the Merrill Gardens at Kirkland retirement community. This was meant to be only for select musicians as we want to ensure that the musicians who are instructing the seniors on how to play their instruments are sufficiently qualified and experienced with playing their instrument. The youth participants formed personal connections with the senior citizens during the event, bridging the generation gap through their shared love for music, while providing musical empowerment and encouragement for both the young musicians and seniors. Suzanne Spire, the events coordinator at Merrill Gardens, has invited our team back for another workshop next month, sharing that “our residents gained so much from the first workshop” in that “it has made a real difference”, and that our team is greatly appreciated.
