5:30 pm - VIP & President's Circle Reception

6:30 pm - Doors Open

7:00 pm - Concert Begins

Featuring:

SCC Chorale & Community Choir

Canyon High School Orchestra

El Rancho Middle School Orchestra

SCC Community Jazz Band

Soloist Professor Jane Kim

Honoring Roberto Velazquez, 2024 SCC Performing Arts Community Partner Award, and Victor Gutierrez, Composer & SCC alum.

About Roberto Velazquez

Roberto began dancing Mexican Folklorico dance in 1975 at Cal Poly Pomona, under the instruction of Benjamin Hernandez.  He then joined the University of Southern California folklorico dance group lead by the late Miguel Delgado. He was then invited to join the Folklorico Group, Teatro Mexicano de Danza in 1977 and was a member for 3 years. After pursuing a professional career as a Labor Law professional with Marriott Corporation, he helped raise his daughters in Maryland and Texas supporting them in cheerleading, band and drill dance participations. Upon moving back to California, he wondered why there were no Mexican Folklorico Dance competitions. He began doing research as to the extend of folklorico dance groups and found out that by 1999 there were several dozen in California alone. He shared his curiosity with his daughters and wife and they began to explore the possibility of starting a Folklorico Dance Competition.  After two years of research and model development they started the first Folklorico Dance Competition in the USA in 2001. The USA National Folklorico Dance Competition company began in that year and has continuously promoted Folklorico Dance Competitions since then. They have now promoted over 57 competitions. Roberto then helped found the International Folklorico Institute, a non-profit organization to help develop other Mexican Folk events. He then promoted a Mariachi and Folklorico Festival and is the Co-Founders along with his wife of the Folklorista Awards.  A program that recognizes the achievements of Mexican Folklorico practitioners in the USA. As a student of the Mexican Folklorico Dance genre he has ventured into other forms of expression and has co-written along with his wife Maribel a play about the origins of the song “La Bamba” the oldest song that is still danced to today.

About Victor Gutierrez

Victor Gutierrez (b. 1997) is a Brooklyn-based composer, performer and actor. His compositional work ranges from orchestral and chamber music to film music with a touch of musical theater. Fascinated by psychology, Victor centers most of his compositional works around how colors relate to human emotions, continuously pushing the boundary between sounds and the human experience. Raised in Southern California (and an SCC alum), Victor creates works infusing diverse sounds and styles such as jazz, latin, and avant-garde that reflects the highly diverse cities and neighborhoods in which he was raised. Victor has written for a number of artists and ensembles such a Brightwork New Music Ensemble, The Rhythm Method and Blackbox New Music Ensemble having had premieres all throughout Southern California and New York. Having recently earned his masters in Music Theory and Composition from New York University, studying under Robert Honstein, Shelley Washingotn, and Hershel Garfein, Victor spends a majority of his time working as a freelance audio engineer and producer for artists and companies in New York, Texas, and Chicago. With a growing interest in collaboration, he hopes to continue his work as a collaborative composer composing for chamber, film, staged and multimedia works and help bring contemporary concert music to a modern musical audience.