A community outreach program in its 15th year
The 2024 West Side Connection will feature violinist Gabriela Salvador Riera, 2nd place winner of the 2023 Sphinx Competition, performing the first movement of Mozart’s Violin Concerto in G.
Gabriela Salvador Riera, 16, is a vocal and strings major at Cab Calloway School of the Arts in Wilmington, Delaware. Gabriela began playing violin at age six and studied with Julianne Murphy-Ruiz at the Music School of Delaware. She currently studies with Shelley Beard at the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, where she also plays in the Advanced-Study Newman String Quartet coached by William Polk of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She has been fortunate to be a PMAY (Philadelphia Music Alliance for Youth) artist since 2020 and is currently concertmaster of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra.
Recent successes include 2nd place in the prestigious 2023 Sphinx Competition, junior division, and winner of the 2022 Delaware Concerto Competition for Young Musicians, as well as the high school division of the 2022 Betsy L. Kent Newark Symphony Concerto Competition, resulting in performances with the Wilmington Community and Newark Symphony Orchestras. In 2022, Gabriela was awarded a BMFA Springboard Grant and was named high-school winner of the Coastal Concerts Competition.
This past summer, Gabriela attended the Encore Chamber Music Summer Academy, as well as intensives at Julliard and CIM with the Sphinx Performance Academy (SPA). She is an alum of the Sphinx Performance Academy at the Curtis Institute, and a two-year recipient of the SPA X-Factor Award. In the summer of 2022, Gabriela participated in a six-week intensive at the Heifetz International Music Institute, and in 2021, Gabriela was selected for the inaugural national cohort of Fortissima, an artistic and leadership development program for young women in classical music at the Colburn School in LA. Also in 2021, Gabriela had the opportunity to take part in the Chicago-Youth-in-Music Festival where she played side-by-side with the Chicago Symphony under the baton of Riccardo Muti. At her high school, Gabriela is a soprano in the school Vocal program, a member of the 2023 Delaware All-State Treble Choir, a member of the National Honor Society, 1st violin in the Cab Calloway Honors Quartet, concertmaster of the select high school Chamber Orchestra, and Assistant Music Director and violinist in her school’s musical productions of Hairspray and The Prom.
West Side Connection, a recipient of the Yale Distinguished Music Partnership Award, enables the BPO to reach out to its international community in the diverse Buffalo area. Through educational activities, guest artist visits and a culminating concert, this project involves students in the Buffalo Public schools, including three Spanish bilingual schools, a Native American magnet school and three international schools serving the population of recent and past immigrants from diverse countries. Exploring diversity under the umbrella of music — a theme uniting all cultures across the globe — allows us to address relevant social issues through an exciting and educational medium.
Hundreds of refugees arrive in Western New York each year from countries all over the world through the US Refugee Resettlement Program. Many of those refugees settle in Buffalo, and a large percentage of them live on the West Side in the neighborhoods surrounding Kleinhans Music Hall. Over half of the refugees arriving each year are from Asia, specifically from Burma and Bhutan. The next largest ethnic group arriving is from Africa; the third largest is from the Middle East. There is also a well-established Puerto Rican community on the West Side. West Side Connection was developed in response to the growth of these populations and through a desire to make an authentic connection with our international community through the powerful entry point of music.
Each year, the program features collaborations with local and national organizations and artists. Past guest artists include the young winners of the Sphinx Competition, a national competition for Black and Latinx string players; the Dance and Drum Company from the African American Cultural Center; dancers from the Latin American Institute, Burmese Community Choir from the International Institute; Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra; composer and violinist Daniel Roumain; conductor Joseph Young; Toronto percussion ensemble TorQ Percussion Quartet; nationally known Project Trio; B-boy Shane Dupree Fry of Verve Dance Studio and Druminar which provides interactive drum experiences in Latin and African traditions.
In addition to the students served directly by the program, for the last six years, the final concert has been shared with many thousands of students across Western New York through our BPO Broadcast On Demand.