Explore the music and dance of 11 cultural groups who have settled in Santa Fe over the centuries through “We are the Music.” A project of The Symphony’s Music Education Committee and Friends of Music Education, this video has benefited thousands of students nationwide. We encourage you to share this video with your family and friends, especially those with nieces and nephews, children, and grandchildren.

Of particular interest is that all performers and narrators in the video are of school-age. The diverse communities that help make Santa Fe the City Different are featured in the video, which highlights the Native American, Spanish, Mexican, Crypto-Jewish, Celtic, German, Greek, Japanese, Tibetan, Sikh, and Central American cultures of our community. The video, with an accompanying curriculum guide, was adopted by the Santa Fe Public Schools for third through ninth grade classroom use and distributed at no charge throughout the district and area schools.

The “We are the Music” project was recognized by the thousand-member League of American Orchestras with the Award of Excellence in the 2011 Gold Book online competition and serves as a model of such projects to this day. We applaud and thank Mat and Meri Frauwirth for their hard work leading the effort in bringing “We are the Music” to life. Mat was an extraordinary chairperson of our Music Education Committee for many wonderful years.

In June 2011, we received The League of American Orchestras’ Award of Excellence for our “We are the Music” DVD and related course materials for third and fourth graders, a special multi-ethnic cultural appreciation program also available nationally through the PBSLearningMedia™ online library.