The Escuela de Niñas Ciegas (School for Blind Girls) in the Las Fuentes neighborhood of Zapopan was the venue for the first service concert of the newest branch of an organization founded by a French priest whose mission was helping young musicians.
Renowned mezzo-soprano Kimball Wheeler, who lives in Guadalajara, has been involved with the organization, Pro Musicis, since the 1980s when she won an award from them and began a series of regular and service concerts around the world.
“It changed my career dramatically,” she said. So after she moved here from California, she thought of starting up a Latin American branch of Pro Musicis. The concert Tuesday at the School for Blind Girls was the first of this newly formed branch. Pro Musicis founder Father Merlet died recently, Wheeler said, spurring her desire to do a concert in his memory.
“The children were very attentive and appreciative,” Wheeler said after the concert, noting that the purpose of Pro Musicis is to expose people to “amazing classical music” that they might not normally hear.“Pro Musicis has always believed that we don’t want to downgrade the music just because the audience might not have heard it before.”
So on Tuesday, Wheeler and pianist Betty Rodriguez, a musician and music promoter distinguished in her own right, presented music by Joaquin Rodrigo, playwright and musician Garcia Lorca, Mozart, Caccini and Rachmaninoff. Wheeler also performed an African American spiritual unaccompanied.
“Pro Musicis is a unique organization because we focus on classical music,” Wheeler said, adding that Pro Musicis America Latina will focus more than ever on service concerts.
“Normally Pro Musicis asks a musician to do two service concerts for each formal one,” she said. She noted that her work with the organization took her to first-class concert halls all over the world, while she also performed at San Quentin prison, a drug rehabilitation center in Harlem, at hospitals for terminally ill children and the like.
She added that the service concerts are done voluntarily, but that sometimes there are expenses, such as transporting a piano to a place where there is none.
“If people would like to schedule a concert or donate, they can contact me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.,” she said, suggesting that anyone interested look at the website www.promusicis.org. She mentioned that she did a concert for Pro Musicis in 2012 at St. Andrew’s Anglican church in Ajijic, with accompanist Javier Vasquez Grela.