– WRITTEN by Toni Clark, Executive Director and Co-Founder It’s been less than a week since the gruesome and senseless murder of George Floyd by a police officer while other officers watched. The haunting video and all the protests afterwards are profoundly sad and upsetting. How does our country begin to repair all that is wrong? ...
By Elle Prillaman, Roanoke, Virginia The familiar is easy, comfortable, and sometimes tempting. The unfamiliar, though, gives you an opportunity to learn and to grow. I was studying abroad in Vienna when the coronavirus crisis cut my much-anticipated study abroad experience short. In a hurry, my friends and I packed our belongings and boarded the next flight...
- WRITTEN by Toni Clark, Executive Director I recently had the opportunity to meet and talk with G. Precious, a rap artist who shares her life through music. She regularly performs and speaks in the New Mexico schools. She participates in the Espanola YMCA Program, an annual event, that brings together Native Americans, Hispanics, Mexicans,...
- WRITTEN by Eduardo Mendonça, Music Director In January 2018, I stayed in a cabin at Fort Worden State Park, Washington, a place famous as the setting for the 1982 film, An Officer and a Gentleman. I was there to compose musical arrangements as part of my residency at Centrum, a nonprofit organization promoting creative arts...
- Submitted by Jennifer in Seattle, Washington My bridge building story is about using puppets to share dance and music with all children, including those with disabilities. I traveled to Ohrid, Macedonia, and throughout Bangladesh with my puppet show to encourage children to dance and play together, each in their own way. One of the puppets...
Monday, March 25th. Our Ambassadors worked on changes made for “I Build Bridges, Not Walls”. New breaks, new format, and new key weren’t everything. This time, they had been challenged to have hands-on in their instruments to execute the song, instead of singing only....
- WRITTEN by Toni Clark, Executive Director and Co-Founder We were talking as people do when their flight is delayed nearly 24 hours. Grzerorz Kalicy and I were both waiting for a flight going east from Denver to Washington DC. That’s home for me as it is for him, a professor of physics at a local...
Hello, bridge builders! Last Monday, we built from the last rehearsal material. We added lyrics, melody, and we played the new song together. The energy was high, and in the composition, a piece of each one of us was surely there. Musically Yours, Eduardo....