The National Institute of Culture and History (NICH) sponsors and organizes all of CiH’s work in Belize. In 2017, CiH founder William Harvey spent 3 weeks there, where he conducted the National Youth Orchestra of Belize and the musicians of the Brukdong Project, led by James Sanker with singer-songwriter Harrison King, in three pieces of brukdong music William arranged for performance at the Street Art Festival on February 25 in Belize City. He also coached the musicians of the National Youth Orchestra as well as young musicians in Belmopan, Corozal, Dangriga, Blue Creek, and at Samuel Haynes Institute of Excellence in Belize City. Finally, he met with H. E. Sir Colville Young, the Governor-General of Belize, who asked him to collect musical instruments for distribution in Belizean schools, as part of his “Music in the Schools” initiative.
Interested in donating musical instruments to the
Governor-General’s “Music in the Schools” initiative?
Thank you to Kim Vazquez of NICH for all her extraordinary efforts; to James Sanker; and to Colville Young, Director of the National Youth Orchestra (and son of the Governor-General).
The 2017 project follows a collaboration with NICH in 2013 in which William visited music schools, gave a master class, coached the National Youth Orchestra, and performed alongside brukdong musicians at the Bliss Centre for the Performing Arts. Here is the project report, with pictures: part 1 and part 2. This video shows a workshop in which William taught young musicians a folksong from Afghanistan (at the time, he also taught at Afghanistan National Institute of Music). Here’s another video of him learning a brukdong song from the same group.
