- Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for coming out tonight. My name is Ryo Hasegawa. I'm the music director
- of the BSO. In these days, I cannot be happier and I cannot be proud to be part of this organization,
- because IU football is winning. Everywhere I go to, and I tell them that I'm a part of the Bloomington
- Symphony Orchestra, and then they always
- you know, oh my gosh, you guys are so strong. You guys are beating the Oregon and then the Michigan.
- And I don't know anything about football, but I'm happy, you know. But of course, I'm happy and so honored
- to be part of this incredible organization, Bloomington Symphony, get to work with these incredible
- musicians. And tonight's concert is about exploring a different sound from various cultures and countries.
- And it's a celebration of
- music, the power of music to heal the human spirit. And this has been presented with our friend, My
- Sister's Closet. So thank you so much for joining, Sandy, and other My Sister's Closet folks. All right,
- and next piece, it's going to be a jet plane. You have to probably fasten your seat belt because this
- mandolin is a piano concerto whose
- that is played by our concerto competition winner, Solar Manly. It's one of a kind. And I hope you will
- get to sort of witness the future star of the classical music. But without further ado, let us welcome
- Solar Manly.
- Good to see you here tonight. First things first, how about another round of applause for our amazing
- young soloists? Let's hear it for Solar. Yeah. So for those of you who don't already know me, I am Alexis
- Witt, and I am the president of the board for the BSO. So as you can see, I have a friend up here with
- me on stage here tonight as well. Hello, friend. Hello, friend.
- And I'm Sandy Keller with My Sister's Closet of Monroe County. And we are very, very excited to be here
- tonight. Absolutely, yes. So you hopefully have seen in your programs that the theme for our season
- this year is between friends. And so we are always, of course, grateful for the friendships that we
- have within our community. We are grateful for the friendships that we have with other organizations.
- And this year, the season in particular, we get to celebrate that in a big way. So we are really excited
- to have My Sister's Closet here with us as part of that celebration. Thank you, Kira. We are here tonight
- to be able to show everyone all the commonalities in our organizations.
- and the people that we serve, particularly vulnerable populations and their children, and we want to
- make sure that they feel like they've got an identity through music, because music makes us whole, music
- makes us strong, and it gives us an identity of who we are so that we feel that we can do anything.
- Absolutely, yes. Thank you, Sandy.
- Thinking a bit more on this nature of friendship, especially new and old friends coming together, I
- would like to see just really quickly a show of hands. How many of you is this your very first BSO concert
- you've ever been to? Whoa, let's have a round of applause.
- That's incredible. Thank you for being here. Welcome to our first time audience members. We hope to
- see you many more times. And for everybody else, welcome back. We're always happy to see you. Now,
- of course, you probably know that buying your tickets, showing up here to these concerts is one of the
- very best ways that you can support our organization. But you might not know that ticket sales make
- up for only about a third of our very lean budget.
- So if you want to continue to be our friends and to help us be your friends back and having these amazing
- events for everybody to come together and enjoy as a community, we hope that you could help us make
- up some of the difference. We of course get grants, we of course have sponsors, but donations are really
- a big way that we can help make up for the rest of our budget.
- So you can look in your programs for more information on how to give to our organization. We also have
- a donation box out in the lobby, old fashioned style, and we hope you can help support the BSO in continuing
- to do what we're doing. And Sandy, how can we help support My Sister's Closet? You can also go out to
- a table out there and pick up some information about our organization and the work that we do in the
- community, and of course,
- We are in an interesting place where we are trying to keep going past June of this next year because
- our lease is ending and we need to renovate a building we need to move into. So if you want information
- about that, it's out there. We'd appreciate any of your support or if you'd like to get involved somehow,
- we'd love to hear from you. Absolutely. Thank you everyone for your support. Thank you all for being
- here. I hope you enjoy the rest of the concert.