The Chorale is proud to announce the recipients of this year’s Contra Costa Chorale Vocal Music Studies Scholarships for West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD)graduating seniors. These two $1000 scholarships have been awarded to Abraham Blanquel from Richmond High School, and Justin Trujillo from Pinole Valley High School.
This scholarship program was created by our Community Connections Committee and funded by donations from Chorale supporters to our Director’s Fund. It is part of our efforts to support music education in our local public schools.
Abraham Blanquel is from San Pablo and will attend UC San Diego this fall. Abraham began playing the violin while attending middle school and continued to play throughout high school, becoming the 1st chair violinist in the Richmond High School Orchestra. In addition to violin, his interests include Korean pop music; he hopes to pursue studying music someday in Korea. Abraham looks forward to a career as a musician and working in music production.
Justin Trujillo lives in Hercules and will attend Sacramento State University in the fall. At Pinole Valley High School Justin sang bass in the Concert Choir. He was also the president of the Marching Band. Playing over a half dozen musical instruments, Justin has also been a member of the Concert Band and the Jazz Ensemble at his school. In his spare time, Justin works at a music store in Pinole where he gives instrumental music lessons to young students. Justin plans to become a music educator and hopes to teach music in the WCCUSD in the future.
The Chorale continues to stay in touch with our 2021 scholarship recipients. Naja Ji Jaga was a student at Pinole Valley High School and Middle College High School. She is currently studying at Boston University. Continuing to play the stand-up bass, Naja helped form a student jazz ensemble and has played gigs on the BU campus. Madison Weller, who sang in choirs while attending De Anza High School, currently attends Contra Costa College where she continued singing in the beginning chorus class. She hopes to transfer to San Jose State in the future.
The Contra Costa Chorale is so proud of all our scholarship winners and looks forward to continuing to offer more scholarships next year. We want to thank the West Contra Costa Public Education Fund for their administrative aid in providing these scholarship awards. But most of all we’d like to thank our donors, whose contributions made it all possible.
