Buying tickets builds dreams.
Supporting the Arts
A PSHA member helps a student try the violin during a presentation of the Music Mobile™
Who and how we help
Buying tickets builds dreams. The proceeds from our fundraising efforts, along with the donations we receive, make funding three annual music programs possible. What’s more, we award gifts and grants to other nonprofit organizations that provide music programs.
Gifts & Grants
We’ve been supporting the arts since 1948. We’ve awarded over $25 million to support music programs in the community including: longstanding support of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, $1 million to help build Walt Disney Concert Hall, and annually funding a diverse list of local music and arts programs.
All manner of music plays center stage. Past grant recipients include concerts, choral productions, music theater, opera, jazz quartets, marching bands and orchestras at local schools, senior centers, and a spectrum of other nonprofit organizations. What’s more, music therapy for at risk children, scholarships for young musicians and music education at a variety of levels are the brainchildren of our program.
Instrumental Competition
Not to brag, but we’ve helped kickstart some pretty amazing talent. Since 1985, Showcase has awarded nearly $600,000 in prize money through its Instrumental Competition to exceptionally talented musicians, ages 16 to 24, who compete each year for approximately $30,000 in cash awards in the categories of strings, woodwinds, and brass to further their music education. Many of our prize winners have gone on to illustrious careers in symphonies around the world. This year, for the first time, we are limiting the 2022 competition to high school students ages 14 to 19.
Music Mobile™
In 1971, music took its first field trip. That’s the year when Showcase hatched an exciting new vehicle to introduce young people to classical music. Our Music Mobile van – outfitted with symphonic instruments – began visiting third graders in their classrooms, introducing them to the sounds of music and the magic of the symphony orchestra. They blow horns. They bow violins. They play drums. They feel great. This award-winning, hands-on program – in partnership with the Pasadena Conservancy of Music – visits schools throughout the San Gabriel Valley. For most of the 130,000 kids we've visited, it’s their first real brush with classical music – not to mention playing instruments and taking part in a simulated orchestra.
Youth Concert
Feast your ears. Since its creation in 1953, nearly 250,000 fourth graders have attended our annual youth-focused concerts – first performed at Pasadena Civic Auditorium – then moved in 2003 to Walt Disney Concert Hall. The PSHA Youth Concerts performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic for more than 4,000 fourth graders each year, are free and created to stage exciting programs that include musical concepts and history.
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