An Overview of the Adams’ Project:

Started in 1992, the first SDSU Adams’ Project engagements were all within the San Diego community. Over the years, achieving our goals of increased professionalism and higher performance quality have resulted in many of our musicians being booked for domestic and international concerts such as the 2008 tour of the Philippines by Trio Amical sponsored the U.S. Department of State. Many Adams’ Project Performers are competition winners, such as the Cecilia String Quartet, Bronze Medalists in the 2008 Osaka Competition, First Prize recipients in the 2009 Rutenberg Competition, and 2010 winners in the Bordeaux International. Jazz vocalist Leonard Patton’s 2008 CD Love, Life, and Song was nominated for the San Diego Music Awards “Best Jazz Album”. In turn, the success of the Adams’ Project has attracted underwriting for student quartets to attend SDSU with partnerships for these ensembles to serve as an outreach arm for major San Diego presenting organizations such as the La Jolla Music Society (ljcms.org) and Mainly Mozart (mainlymozart.org). Project director Dr. Marian Liebowitz has represented the best of the roster at the Western Arts Alliance Annual Booking Conference for the past decade. The Adams’ Project serves as the bridge between emerging musicians and professional management.

A 2007 corporate gift sent Adams’ Project performers to the Monarch School for Homeless Youth. The Monarch students immediately responded to the SDSU musicians who were just a few years older and of similar cultural backgrounds. This was the impetus for expanding the Adams’ Project educational program to other at-risk populations and Heartpower Performances (psfa.sdsu.edu/heartpower) was created.

By nature of the audiences served by Heartpower Performances, almost all the recipients are low-income minorities. Many are also disabled. While a typical audience size ranges from 25-150, the number of annual events we are able to provide creates a total population served of over 10,000 youth and adults.

Heartpower Performances is an outreach project that engages diverse communities and reaches new audiences by presenting concerts and workshops to at-risk organizations and any segment of the population normally not served by other music organizations. Heartpower Performances visits the juvenile justice system, those in drug and alcohol rehabilitation, those recovering from child abuse, homeless and foster children, and homeless veterans. The musicians also appear in neighborhood libraries throughout Southern California thereby adding to the new audience base exponentially. Dr. Liebowitz offered a workshop entitled “New Frontiers in Outreach” at the 2010 Chamber Music America national conference in New York for which she and SDSU alumni group the Cecilia String Quartet received acclaim for groundbreaking work with at-risk populations.