The San Gabriel Valley Choral Company will be awarding scholarships to two local musicians at their June concerts. This award was established this season to honor the SGVCC’s previous artistic director, Alexander Ruggieri, who contributed so much to Southern California’s musical culture before his passing last summer.

 

The $250 scholarship for composition will be awarded to Belinda Huang, a Glen A. Wilson High School senior who will be attending the Berklee College of Music next fall. Ms. Huang, who sings and plays piano and guitar, began composing at the age of 14 and her dream is “to create beautiful art that lives and breathes hope, inspiration, and joy into others.” She plans to study music as well as learn to be a producer/engineer in a studio. Ms. Huang would also like to become a music teacher someday as well as continuing to perform and sing. She has studied with Scott Wolf of USC and Cleora Leist of UC Santa Barbara. Ms. Huang will be performing her award-winning composition, “Running,” at the SGVCC’s June 8 concert in Monrovia.

 

The $250 scholarship for vocal performance will be awarded June 15 to Alyssa Ramirez, a Mount San Antonio College student majoring in vocal performance. She aspires to be an opera singer and dreams of performing with the Metropolitan Opera or other major opera someday. Her love for opera is so great, she cannot see herself doing anything else as a career. Ms. Ramirez has studied music and voice for many years to prepare for her career. Her vocal instructors have included Catherine Ireland of the LA Opera and Aram Barsamian of Mt. San Antonio College. Ms. Ramirez will be performing "Porgi Amor" from Le Nozze di Figaro by Mozart at the SGVCC’s June 15 concert in Pasadena.

 

The SGVCC program that the scholarship winners will be joining is entitled, “Tell It! A Celebration of America’s Folk Music Heritage.” Complete with soloists and instrumentalists, this rousing concert features folk songs, spirituals, and American classics by Aaron Copland, Stephen Foster, and more. Tickets are now available at the cost of $9 to $15 for two performances: June 8 at 6:15 p.m. at First Presbyterian Church of Monrovia and June 15 at 5:00 p.m. at All Saints Church in Pasadena. More information can be found at www.choralcompany.org or by calling 626-579-2433.
 

Alexander Ruggieri (1952-2012) shared his many gifts with the San Gabriel Valley Choral Company as Artistic Director in 2011 and 2012. Though his time with the SGVCC was short, Alex’s impact on its program was profound. The SGVCC honors his memory and his love of music with the Alexander Ruggieri Memorial Scholarship. It is their intention to offer this scholarship annually, that his legacy live on through the continued music education of young people.

 

Alex Ruggieri was a man of talent, passion and presence. With a keen mind, a sincere and abiding love of great music, and a booming bass voice, he was an imposing figure that housed sharp wit and a kind heart. He was well-known in Southern California and well beyond, as his tenacity and deep knowledge of choral repertoire made him a sought-after conductor, coach and author. An award-winning composer, Alex was a man of many diverse passions, reading extensively and fostering interests in film, literature, science, history, sports and travel, as well as the performing arts.1

 

Mr. Ruggieri passed away in July 2012, after a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer. During his life, he was an incredible conductor of both choral and instrumental ensembles, with degrees from the University of Southern California and Wayne State University (Detroit). He studied with such noted teachers as Charles Hirt, Valter Poole, Gustav Meier, Hans Beer and Helmuth Rilling.

 

Mr. Ruggieri was the Music Director of the famed Gilbert and Sullivan repertory company Opera A La Carte, as well as Music Director of the 32-year old University Campus Choir in Westwood and the San Gabriel Valley Choral Company. For five years he was the Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Bach Festival and for seventeen years he was Artistic Director of the Cambridge Singers in Pasadena. He frequently did Russian language coaching for, and occasionally sang with, the Los Angeles Master Chorale. He conducted numerous church choirs in the Los Angeles area, Wichita Falls, TX, and Detroit, MI, over his extensive career.

 

Mr. Ruggieri was involved with the music of the Eastern Orthodox Church for over 40 years. He began his career as director of the choir at Holy Virgin Mary Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Silverlake, where he sang with his sister, Irene, as a teenager. At age 24, after founding the Orthodox Concert Choir of Los Angeles, he directed the ensemble in the west-coast premiere performance of Rachmaninoff's All Night Vigil. A subsequent recording of the work, on VOX-Turnabout records, has been the only performance of this work in the composer-sanctioned English edition in the catalogue.

Mr. Ruggieri was one of 12 choral music experts from around the world, working under the guidance of renowned cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and musicologist Dr. Vladimir Morosan, to compile the most important liturgical music written over the last 1,000 years. The first volume of Monuments of Russian Church Music was published by Musica Russica in 1991. He subsequently co-edited the volume on Rachmaninoff's All Night Vigil, and continued to edit and perform lesser-known music from Russia and Eastern Europe.

Mr. Ruggieri’s composition, Madrigals, was awarded first prize in the South Bay Master Chorale’s National Composition Competition in 1998. In 1995, he appeared along with his ensemble, The Cambridge Singers, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on the nationally broadcast program Music and the Spoken Word.

Alex’s other interests included classic movies, old-time radio, dance band and swing music from the early 20th century, traveling, racquetball, NPR, museums, astronomy, theater and reading biographies and histories. He loved to discuss religion, politics and music history. He shared the last eight years of his life with Jamie Martin in Pasadena, CA, hosting annual Christmas caroling parties, visiting family, and hiking around Eureka and other parts of the northern California coastline. He is sorely missed by his family and all the people he influenced and loved.

 

 

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