Monterey Bay Blues Festival Golf Tournament
Fundraiser October 9th
While you are thinking of us, please take a moment to mark your calendars for
our inaugural Monterey Bay Blues Festival Golf Tournament, which be held on October 9 at the beautiful
Bayonet Black Horse Golf Course in Seaside. For details on participating, please e-mail Michelle at the Monterey Blues Festival. To register for the tournament or become Tee Sponsor,click here and print the application. Proceeds from
this event benefit our Monterey Bay Blues in the Schools youth music education program.
This MBBF program consists of a series of presentations to students at middle and high schools, followed by clinic-style opportunities for music students to learn about the Blues, the true American art form of Music. From history to performance, the BITS project is dedicated to the pursuit of excellence and the promotion of "blues-based" education in music.
Recent Events:
Etta James entertained all those at the Golden State Theatre on December 7, 2007 --
see Press Release
We presented B.B. King on Thursday, October 25, 2007, 8:00 p.m.
This was a benefit events for the Monterey Bay Blues Festival's education program, Blues in the Schools. Thank you for your support!
At a time when schools are rapidly losing funding for arts programs, the Monterey Blues Festival has stepped in to help. Scholarship recipients who demonstrated the highest aptitude and the strongest desire to share their gifts, earned 'medallist honors' entitling them to MBBF's largest scholarships. Additional grants to a variety of high school and after school arts programs throughout the region, has also helped to build diverse and accessible study programs.
The Monterey Bay 'Blues in the Schools' Program seeks to broaden student perspectives and nurture their understanding and performance of the blues. The concept for the "Blues in the Schools" project includes an innovative learning environment, utilizing our blues-based community, with a diversity of programs to learn how to play, apply and perform the blues.
The founders of the Monterey Bay Blues Festival (MBBF), its Board of Directors, were bold and far-reaching in envisioning an organization that would both apply blues performance and at the same time support music and performance education through annual scholarships.
**With twenty years of successful organizational experience, the MBBF Board of Directors is ready to further its educational impact by bringing “blues to the schools”. Education, public and private, represents the future of the region, the state, and this country and “blues education” deserves nothing less than the commitment, hard work, and sacrifices of all involved in its advancement.
This is a critical time when state and federal funding is being cut from our schools. We all are aware that during hard economic times like these, arts funding and classes are the first to be eliminated from school curriculums. We also know arts education is extremely beneficial and involvement in music education in particular is known to improve student learning capabilities in all areas of education. MBBF is encouraging and creating community-based partnerships as well as entrepreneurial opportunities to help support continuing music education in the schools through the new “Monterey Bay Blues in the Schools” program.
The first classes of the new program began at CSU Monterey Bay on March 8, 2005 with local teachers learning to play the harmonica and its ties to the evolution of the blues. The emphasis of the instruction was to enable teachers to take what they learned back to their classrooms and students. The participants were excited and found the instruction creative and useful. The program will continue with “Blues Music is Our Heritage" youth assembly presentations at many local school and progress on to "Everyone Can Play the Blues" school band/blues band clinics. It is designed to include education on the blues not only in music classes but in history, civics, and a variety of classes helping to make young people aware of our blues heritage and the role it played in our country’s development. |
