June 2022

Newsletter

Volume 23, Issue 11 | June 2022

Jesse Micek, President

Olya Katsman, Vice President

Karen Wolff, Second Vice President

Millie Chiem, Treasurer

Philip Halseth, Corresponding Secretary

Ruth Zhou, Recording Secretary

Katherine Valdez, Membership Secretary & Referrals Chair

Grace Cheng, Director

Maria Ehlert, Director

Jed Galant, Director

Gloria Ho, Director

Lu Huang, Director & Website Administrator

Varvara Milinder, Director

David Ross, Director and Student Recitals

Maria Ehlert, Hospitality

Ruth Zhou, Historian

Carmencita Aspiras, Sunshine

Olya Katsman, MSSL Community Outreach

Dr. Jiang Wu, VOCE

Gloria Ho, CM Chair and North Region Chair, (Piano, Strings, Woodwinds and Voice)

Grace Cheng, CM South Region Administrator

Note from the President

Greetings -

There’s an old hymn I like called “Present Joys”. Here are a couple memorable lines from the lyrics:

We thank the Lord of heav’n and earth

For present joys, for blessings past

As we wrap up another busy year of Southern Alameda County Branch activities, I’d like to take a moment to list and celebrate a few of our “present joys” and blessings from the past year:

We presented five in-person branch recitals safely and successfully.
We had two guest lecturers in fall 2021: Peter Mack & Barbie Wong. Both of their presentations were great (although very sparsely attended…)
Our branch’s Music Students Service League (MSSL) presented an inaugural Holiday Fundraiser Concert last December which raised a total of $1,001 in donations for the branch.
In May at the Beatles Concert organized by our branch board, we collected $730 in cash donations (plus an untold amount of electronic donations). All proceeds from this event were donated to Ukraine charity “Voices of Children”.
During one weekend in April, our branch hosted seven in-person branch honors recitals.
At the May scholarship recital, a total of $5,150 in scholarship awards were distributed to worthy high school senior students from our branch.
This year our branch has two new recipients of the prestigious Young Artist Guild (YAG) award. (Congratulations to Jinna Lee & Erin Yu and their teachers Susie Kim & Olya Katsman!)

Whether you engaged with the activities and work of our branch this year or not, all of the above happened. Needless to say, we as a branch board are proud of these accomplishments.

We have a full slate of activities in the works for next year, the first being a picnic general meeting for our branch at a park in Hayward on August 13th. You will be hearing more details about that in the weeks to come. Until then, enjoy the summer!

All the best,

Jesse Micek