The Riverside Arts Academy recently held its first in-person performances in more than a year.
Students who participated in the Riverside Arts Academy Music Project’s Summer Music Camp presented two concerts July 30 at Riverside’s Cesar Chavez Community Center as the finale of the monthlong program.
The Summer Music Camp, for students entering third through 12th grades, offered band, strings, choir and advanced ensemble instruction, plus general music classes for beginners.
The groups in the July 30 concerts performed music ranging from “Eye of the Tiger” by Frank Sullivan III and Jim Peterik to “Locus Iste” by Anton Bruckner, according to a news release.
Earlier in July, a group of students from the Summer Music Camp performed at one of Riverside’s Summer Fun Concerts in the Park events. Ryan Gross, one of the Riverside Arts Academy Music Project’s teaching artists, directed the group performing July 21 at Fairmount Park.
Before the group performed at the park, Annemarie Guzy, vice president of Riverside Arts Academy, introduced the organization’s new music director, Nové Deypalan, to those at the event.
Deypalan, originally from the Philippines, received conducting degrees from Chapman University and the University of South Carolina and a degree in choral music from the University of Southern California.
He received the Highest Distinction Award with the St. Petersburg Chamber Philharmonic in Russia and was a two-time prize winner of the International Conductors Workshop and Competition in Atlanta. He also received the second prize award at the 14th Danube International Conducting Competition in 2018 with the Danube Symphony Orchestra in Budapest, Hungary.
Deypalan has led ensembles in performances at Carnegie Hall and for popes at the Vatican, and he is the founder and executive director of the Los Angeles Conducting Workshop Institute.
