With students hailing from Round Rock, Austin, Cedar Park, and ranging in age from 14-17, the Austin Bella Corda Guitar Ensemble is an internationally award-winning Central Texas-based music group with a mission. This concert is a fundraising effort for the very nonprofit from which they receive training, the Young Performing Artist Program (YPAP). It’s rather fitting, since the YPA Program not only is about providing music instruction for promising, pre-college guitarists, but an essential component of the program is that students give back to their community.

To that end, since inception in 2011, Austin Bella Corda has given over 50 performances, bringing their unique art music to hospitals, retirement centers, libraries, schools, church services, and nonprofit organizations. Among those they’ve helped include: Hurricane Harvey relief, the Jennifer Wilkes Foundation, Stone Haven Food Bank, and the Georgetown Festival of the Arts. Their professional track of learning at the YPA Program, combined with community service, is only possible with donors who believe in the cultural value of music education. Thanks to the music training received offered by this nonprofit organization, these students have received over a dozen major awards in significant youth music competitions, and their talents have earned students sizeable university scholarships.

As Austin Bella Corda, these student musicians play eclectic programs from the Medieval to traditional classical, folk, global music, and even big-band sounds – all with the classical guitar. The program for this April 6^th concert will include:

• Selections from Renaissance (Robinson and Praetorius), Baroque (GF Telemann), a work based upon the Sephardic tradition, a modern work by James Chu, and arrangements from the folk music tradition of the Americas.
• Multi award-winning guitar soloist, Aytahn Benavi, who is a member of the YPA Program. To shed light on this young guitar’s talent, the great Italian composer, Maestro Angelo Gilardino, upon hearing Aytahn perform online, called the young Benavi “a gift from heaven” and dedicated and composed a work especially for Aytahn to perform.