From the Artistic Director

Dear SFGC Family,

I saw so many of you last Thursday at San Francisco City Hall, to honor Beth Avakian with music and hear the mayoral proclamation honoring her achievements as founder and director of the Chorus School for so many years, on behalf of the city and county of San Francisco! I looked around and saw a look on so many faces that matched exactly how I felt: joy, gratitude, pride, admiration, and deep affection.

This is the last you will hear directly from me for the season, but here's the great news: I'll be working behind the scenes with three of our own girls, our chosen Tour Bloggers, who will be continuing this thread with their own Postcards from Tour! Yes, we want to bring you all along with us on our Nordic tour, so these three girls will be writing you their impressions and observations, starting with our June 5 tour sendoff concert and continuing through our concert engagements in Lund, Helsinki, Tallinn, and Stockholm.

Meet Juliana Iluminata Wilczynski, Evie Hidysmith, and Leah Ofman (picture left to right in the photo below):

Juliana is 18 and has spent a fair amount of time in Estonia and the Baltics. In fact, she describes herself as a "Scandinavian/Baltic cultural connoisseur"! She also describes herself as a language geek, so she's hitting the books these days, learning a few phrases in Swedish and Finnish too!

Evie is 15 and has been in the SFGC for 9 years. That's way more than half of her life! She is a composer as well as a singer, and brings a deep musicianship and a long history with the organization to her role as blogger.

Leah is 17 and is looking forward to combining three of her great loves: travel, writing, and singing. She has composed poetic travelogues of some local travels, and is looking forward to bringing that same viewpoint to new histories and cultures.

So keep your eye out for our first series of Postcards from Tour!

Yours, Lisa