Steel Magic Northwest performs Holiday in Steel at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 15 at Meridian Middle School, 23480 120th Ave. SE, Kent.<\/p>\n
The steel band concert will feature the sixth grade class and the secondary level Pan Wizards steel drum group.<\/p>\n
The program will include holiday classics, including “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from the Nutcracker Suite, as well as popular and Caribbean favorites.<\/p>\n
The event is free and open to the public. Tax-deductible donations will be gratefully accepted.<\/p>\n
Steel Magic Northwest – in collaboration with the City of Kent Arts Commission, Sunrise Elementary School, and Meridian Middle School – presents the concert.<\/p>\n
Steel Magic Northwest, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing after-school steel band to area youth, is new to Kent. But there is a long history of steel band in the schools in the Kent School District. When the 25-year-old Sunrise Elementary School steel band program was about to fold due to a lack of space, director Gary Gibson – Steel Magic Northwest’s executive, artistic director and founder – pushed to find a new location (Meridian Middle School) and open up the program to kids district wide, grades 6-12.<\/p>\n
Just finishing its first 12-week session, most of the young performers are either current Sunrise students or alumni of Sunrise Elementary’s steel band from the past two years, but both groups include students from other area schools.<\/p>\n
The three-way partnership of Sunrise Elementary, Meridian Middle School, and Steel Magic Northwest is the first step in creating “one of the top two or three youth steel band organizations in the United States,” according to Gibson, who has been pushing for something like this during the five years he directed the Sunrise group.<\/p>\n