Music program back in session after hiatus

By Crystal Elescano Record-Journal staff

WALLINGFORD After a three-year hiatus, the Teach Music Program between the Spanish Community of Wallingford and Choate Rosemary Hall is back in session.

Choate students teach piano, guitar, violin and trumpet lessons every Wednesday at the Ann and George Colony Hall on the Choate Rosemary Hall campus, located at 333 Christian St., from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m.

The 14-year-old music program has been collaborating since 2009, after SCOW Music Director Evangeline Mendoza Bourgeois started her first private music school, Escuela Guadalu- pana de Música. The school opened in 2008, and Javier Cerna, owner at the time of San Juanito Mexico Store in downtown Wallingford, let Bourgeois use his storefront, free of cost, in order to practice.

The school was originally going to teach classical music, but Bourgeois quickly realized there wasn’t enough community interest.

According to Bourgeois, Cerna asked her “Why don’t you teach mariachi?” and so she decided to enroll in a mariachi program where she received instruction on how to successfully teach the music to her students. Bourgeois kept returning to the program every summer for five years.

In 2009, Bourgeois called the then director of Choate and asked if there were volunteers available to teach vio- lin to her students. Two students would walk down from Choate and teach the students how to play.

In 2010, Maria Campos-Harlow, then executive director

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