The Hughes Middle School strings and choral department will be holding a music festival on Thursday, Mar. 21 at 6 pm in the Mesquite Rec Center Field at 100 W. Old Mill Road. All are invited.
A number of different ensembles at the school will be performing an outdoor concert for the general public at the location. This will include orchestra groups, choirs and guitar ensembles.
Attendees are encouraged to bring lawn chairs or blankets for seating. Local food vendor trucks White Boys Tacos, Fixology and the Corn Dog Company will also be in attendance to serve the crowd that evening.
Hughes music teacher Jill Laub said that she had planned the event with the idea of building more community awareness and support for local music education programs.
“Of course, youth sports is huge in the Virgin Valley community,” Laub said. “And that is a good thing. But we were hoping to build more of an awareness of what the kids are doing in music here. There is a lot of musical talent in Virgin Valley and we wanted to build up the music side as well.”
Laub said that she is seeing strong student involvement for the programs she teaches. Across her orchestra, choir and guitar classes she has about 230 students involved. That is a big number considering that Hughes has a total enrollment of about 540 kids. The school also has a successful band program.
But with that involvement, there are also ever mounting budgetary needs for the programs. Funds are always needed to replace instruments, music stands, sheet music and other equipment.
So this free festival event is also being framed as a fundraiser. The event will feature a raffle for a variety of different prizes donated by businesses in the region.
The grand raffle prize will be a new Krutz full-size violin with case and bow, which is valued at around $700.
A host of other prizes have also been donated by local businesses including spa packages, golf rounds, bowling nights and much more.
“The kids have been working really hard to prepare and they are very excited about this fun community event,” Laub said. “Everyone is invited. We hope it will draw a crowd.”
