SPONSOR HIGHLIGHT: Santa Cruz Foundation for the Performing Arts
The Santa Cruz Foundation for the Performing Arts was founded in 2005 to promote the performing arts on behalf of the Santa Cruz County, Arizona community. Today, SCFPA brings world-class performers and local talent to the stage in Southern Arizona’s beautiful Santa Cruz Valley. Through a series of unique events, SCFPA offers fresh, exciting ways for both residents and visitors to experience chamber music in all its various forms.
The Santa Cruz Foundation for the Performing Arts (SCFPA) is dedicated to presenting high quality live performances of traditional and classical music in Southern Arizona’s Santa Cruz Valley. For many years, SCFPA brought chamber music to Southern Arizona in area homes and historic sites. In 2017, the organization’s long range goal became a reality. The exquisite Benderly-Kendall Opera House was completed in Patagonia, Arizona. Today this state of the art recital hall is a permanent venue for future generations of concert goers.
The 2019-2020 concert series includes a variety of duo and trio ensembles that feature harp, flute, violin and piano. February concerts feature a Japanese duo on the koto and violoncello instruments, and the award-winning Newpoli Ensemble Mediterranean, comprised of musicians and dancers who meld traditional Italian folk music with Greek, Spanish and Turkish grooves. During the month of March, the Opera House hosts three University of Arizona Musicians on Tour concerts with outstanding students from the Fred Fox School of Music. The season concludes with Baroque Chamber Music and a Schumann Piano Quintet featuring former artist-in-residence Evan Kory and his colleagues, who will travel from all parts of the country and overseas to perform at the Opera House.
SCFPA Executive and Artist Director Christina Wilhelm says, “Each season we strive to maintain the highest quality musical standard bringing world-class talent to the Opera House in these intimate performances. People who attend our concerts tell us that they are enveloped by the sound and enthralled by the shared experience of wonder and amazement. Musicians and audiences thrive through a symbiotic energy exchange in which audiences respond to the performers, who, in turn, respond to the audience as they are all embraced by the sounds.
The Opera House follows the design tradition of the long and narrow 19th century salons where chamber music was first performed, like the Felix Mendelssohn Music Room in Leipzig, Germany. Acoustical science proves that those proportions—a room twice as long as it is wide—help bring unamplified direct and reflected sounds of a performance to every seat with equal volume, liveliness, and warmth.
It’s a shared mission that has inspired SCFPA to support Mat Bevel Company each year during its annual fundraiser as a sponsor. SCFPA and MBC’s work centers around providing deeply personal experiences for audiences through the performing arts. Christina explains, “We support MBC because we collaborate with like-minded organizations that value the role of creativity and the performing arts in enhancing our communities and people’s lives.”
SCFPA’s Opera House revives the traditional role that opera houses played in the formation of the West. Small town opera houses, like the one right here in Patagonia, were born of a desire to enhance the cultural status of the community. Isolated rural mining towns, especially, established opera houses as a way for residents to hear world-class musicians on tour as a much needed and immensely popular form of entertainment.
In addition to the Opera House, SCPFA has a professional, custom designed stage on wheels called the Concert Haul® that brings performers to the audience. The Concert Haul® also serves as the onsite venue for SCFPA’s series of free outdoor community concert series during the month of June.
SCFPA Executive and Artist Director Christina Wilhelm with two interns at The Opera House.
SCFPA and MBC also share a commitment to bringing art and music into the lives of young people. A 2017 assessment by the National Assessment of Educational Progress reported that national art scores in the Western part of the United States lagged well behind those of the Northeast and East Coast. Only a third of 8th-graders in the western U.S. took an art class in 2016 year and only 17 percent played in the school band, the lowest figures of any region in the country, according this national arts assessment.
MBC’s The Universe Within uses the Surrealistic Pop Science Theater as the framework for students to learn about the science and art of sculpture, kinetic art, poetry and performance. SCFPA’s internship program introduces students to various aspects of producing live performing arts.
Mat Bevel Company thanks SCFPA for its support of the performing arts and arts education programming!