PORT ANGELES — Young musicians who are taking part in their schools’ strings programs are invited to apply for Music on the Strait’s Alice Rapasky scholarships, to total at least $5,000 this season.
The deadline is Dec. 1 for applications, and the form can be found at https://pmorg.net/Rapasky.
The scholarships, which are for Clallam County students, are named for Alice Anderson Rapasky. She was a great lover and supporter of the arts on the North Olympic Peninsula, noted James Garlick and Richard O’Neill, cofounders of Music on the Strait (MOTS).
The two Clallam County-born string players, now professional musicians, began the annual festival of chamber music in 2018. Rapasky was an ardent supporter of MOTS.
“When she passed away in 2022, we wanted to remember her by supporting young musicians in our community,” O’Neill and Garlick said on MOTS’ website, musiconthestrait.com.
The summer festival aims to share chamber music, both its traditions and its emerging voices, through community outreach, Garlick said. To that end, the Alice Rapasky Scholarship was created last year.
The scholarship committee will award a minimum of 10 scholarships at $500 each. The program is intended to assist qualified students to take private music lessons in Clallam County.
Special consideration will be given to students who are otherwise unable to afford private music lessons. To qualify, students need to be a participating member of their school orchestra or similar organization.
“This is a wonderful and important opportunity for students and for our community,” said music teacher Jory Noble, a member of the scholarship committee. “When students have private lessons, they learn technique that they will use in all their musical activities, and have the chance to learn really wonderful solo pieces. It accelerates their learning, their reading, their sound and their confidence.”
“I’ve seen this with the students that I am teaching through the Rapasky scholarship and look forward to having more Rapasky scholarship students in my studio,” added Noble, who is the Port Angeles Symphony’s concertmaster. “The community benefits by producing bright, engaged, confident young musicians who go on to enrich the Port Angeles Symphony, Port Angeles weddings, churches and many of our special events, as well as using their creative skills in many other ways.”
Shirley Anderson of Sequim, also a steadfast supporter of the performing arts in Clallam County, now serves on the scholarship award committee along with Garlick, Noble and their fellow musicians and teachers Traci Winters Tyson, Phil Morgan-Ellis and administrative coordinator Amanda Lukens.
In 2022, four young cellists, two violists, five violinists and two bassists received Alice Rapasky scholarships.
