Saturday, March 25th, 2017  ᛫  4PM  ᛫  521 West 126th Street

Opus 118 students perform with the Harlem Chamber Players, directed by Roberta Guaspari.

Opus 118 is thrilled to announce our sixth annual spring concert together with the Harlem Chamber Players. Our exceptional ensemble students will return to the stage at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. We can’t wait to perform with our longtime professional friends and collaborators in this beautiful, historic venue once again!

Tickets will be available at the door, or on the Harlem Chamber Players’ website. For advanced tickets and more information, please visit the event webpage. We hope to see you there!

Check out this Special Music School profile of Opus 118 alum Josh Kail. He’s a high school senior at SMS, but he started studying the violin in second grade at Central Park East II Elementary. Music remains a key part of his studies and his life. We’re so proud of Josh, and all of our students whose hard work really pays off!

Opus 118 is excited to be offering an Intro to Violin after-school class, at our CPEII Middle School location!  This small group class is aimed at children in Kindergarten, first, and second grades with no previous experience.  It is a wonderful way to get beginners excited about Opus’s first instrument!  Financial aid is available.

Interested in registering your student? You can find full class information and applications here . Spots are filling up quickly, so register today!

Did you know that Opus 118 also has a guitar program?  Steve Jabas has been teaching guitar to our students since 2008!  Steve is a talented guitarist, music producer, composer, and arranger who hails from Minnesota.  He is excited to expand the Opus guitar program in the coming school year. 

Steve is committed to bringing music into the lives of his students in many forms. At his studio’s spring 2016 recital (pictured above), students performed fully rehearsed pieces, improvised collaborations, and even their own compositions. Guitar lessons with Steve afford students incredibly diverse musical experiences, and a special ability to explore.

When we think about Opus 118, we all think of Roberta Guaspari’s celebrated violin program. But do you know that Opus also has an extraordinary – and growing! – cello program?  What started as one of our smallest studios has been expanding in recent years. The cello program has been essential to Opus’s development broadly: it has diversified our sound, provided children with a wider range of options, and exposed students to the exciting possibilities of collaboration across instruments.

Nelly Rocha is Opus 118’s cello teacher. She comes to us with an extensive performance background, including work with the Camerata New York, the National Lyric Opera, Reading Symphony Orchestra, Rhode Island Philharmonic, and the Miami Symphony Orchestra. In her feature for our spring newsletter, Nelly cited the cello’s deep, distinguishable sound as what drew her to it as a young musician. For burgeoning students of the instrument, Nelly is committed to imparting a “never-ending curiosity, a continuous desire to learn, and the joy of making music.”

We couldn’t be prouder of our current cello students, whose commitment to a challenging and rewarding instrument inspires us. This school year, we are hoping to bring even more students on board to study our lowest-toned instrument! 

 

Interested in registering a student for our cello program? Click over to our registration page to learn more about the 2016-2017 after-school offerings!

It’s not over yet!

We are beyond thrilled to report that we not only met our original goal, but we reached our bonus goal as well! We aren’t quitting yet. Now that we have reached $25,000, we continue to keep every single dollar we earn.

Every $1,200 we make will fund a full scholarship for one of our students. If we make $30,000, we can fund another four full scholarships for after-school instruction!

Please check out the link at http://www.charidy.com/opus25 and donate today! Thank you for this incredible support.

Check out the following link to see all things Opus 118 for the spring of 2016!

Opus 118 Spring Newsletter 2016

With the 2015-2016 academic year winding down, our students are as excited about all these upcoming performance opportunities as they are about the warming weather!  Below please find all the details — we hope you can join us!

• Friday, May 6th, 5:30PM: 70-Day Practice Challenge Celebration Recital, CPEII Middle School
• Friday, May 13th, 7:15PM: Piano Studio Recital, CPEII Elementary School
• Wednesday, June 1st, 7:00PM: Honors Recital (location TBD)
• Thursday, June 16th, 6:30PM: End-Of-Year Concert, American Academy of Arts and Letters

Do you have your tickets yet?  Tomorrow, Saturday March 12th, is our fifth annual spring concert in collaboration with the Harlem Chamber Players!  Don’t miss this opportunity to hear our talented ensemble students perform pieces ranging from Bach to The Beatles.

We’ll be at the historic St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Harlem at 4PM. Tickets can be purchased here, or at the door. We can’t wait to see you there!

Hey, Opus 118 Alumni – it’s been too long!

In honor of Opus 118’s 25th year providing quality music education to children in East Harlem, we are collecting alumni stories!  Please write to us with your Opus stories: how has Opus impacted your life? What’s your favorite Opus memory? What did music education mean to you? Tell us what you’re up to now!

As we reach our 25th proud year of bringing music into our community, we’re excited to receive, share, and reflect upon stories of those who have come on this journey with us. We will be including a number of these stories in our spring newsletter, so don’t miss the chance to share your love for Opus!

You can submit your alumni stories by emailing afeinman@opus118.org; sending them to us in a Facebook message; OR, sharing them on Twitter or Facebook with the hashtag ‪#‎OpusStories‬. We can’t wait to hear from you!