Boys & Girls Club of Buena Park benefits
By Loreen Berlin
Twenty top kids from ages six to 18, from the Boys & Girls Club of Buena Park, were treated to a Disneyland Resort All-American College Band presentation recently at Yamaha’s headquarters in Buena Park.
“This is an opportunity for the kids to experience live music performed by college students,” said Boys & Girls Club CEO Todd Trout. “We want our kids to aspire to music and the arts and we’re excited to be part of this presentation today. Our kids are really excited to be here.”
The program is hailed as the most prestigious music program in the country, with Yamaha Corporation through an educational partnership supplying all of the beautiful brass musical instruments for Disneyland Resort.
Each of the attendees also received ice cream to enjoy under the hot summer sunshine as the 21-member band ensemble gave an inspiring and exciting lunchtime concert on the front steps of Yamaha’s headquarters for the Boys & Girls, Yamaha employees and Mayor Virginia Vaughn, who is a member of the Boys & Girls Club board.
Yamaha has been presenting the program since 2007, but it was launched at Disneyland in 1971 and the Walt Disney World in 1972.
The purpose of the All-American Band was designed to cultivate relationships between the Disneyland Resort and colleges and universities around the country by selecting top college-band students for a world-class summer internship program.
Marketing Communications Manager David Jewell said the collaboration between Disney and Yamaha has afforded student guests of Disneyland Resort a meaningful musical experience and high-quality products impeccably maintained by some of the world’s most experienced instrument experts.
Instruments provided by Yamaha include a wide-range of brass such as flutes, clarinets, saxophones, trumpets, flugelhorns, trombones, mellophones, tubas, marching bass drums, a silent bass and silent brass systems.
And it was truly an amazing group of young people from colleges all over the United States who played to choreographed renditions that were mind-boggling; they were real showmen. The musicians not only played for the kids, they played directly to them, coming up near the kids seated on the lawn.
“Yamaha and Disneyland Resort have enjoyed a longstanding relationship for the past 28 years,” said Jewell. “Disneyland is one of the largest employers of professional musicians in the world, and Yamaha has outfitted those players with professional-grade instruments including Yamaha drum sets, which occupy the stage at performance venues; an upright piano that has provided entertainment for many years at Refreshment Corner on Main Street U.S.A., and Yamaha guitars, used in guest performances throughout the resort, including a Yamaha Disklavier (an acoustic piano outfitted with electronic sensors for recording and electromechanical solenoids for player piano-style playback) that occupies the lobby of Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel.”
Jewell said Yamaha values the success of talented young musicians, and that the collaboration with Disneyland Resort speaks to the unwavering support for music education the two companies enjoy together.
“Providing high-quality instruments needed by the Disneyland Resort All-American College Band allows the members to excel in their musical careers, and in turn, inspires young children to explore the joy of making music. Watching the reaction of the children from the Boys & Girls Club to the group’s performance today was an inspiration in itself,” exclaimed Jewell.
