Recent shows at the Clark Center

T and I ushered a couple of shows at the Clark Center this past week. The first was a fund raiser concert Saturday afternoon, put on by the Allen Hancock College Concert Band. Interestingly the college is in Santa Maria, which is Santa Barbara county but the concert was to benefit the Lucia Mar, which is the school district in the southern part of San Luis Obispo county. The band has about 75 members, many of them local school music teachers, band directors, and members of the community including some high school students. The show was just about sold out. They held a number of raffles to augment the ticket sales. They actually sounded pretty good.

The second was an elementary school performance of Jungle Book. The Oceano Elementary school is the "lowest performing school" in the district. The school is over 50% Latino, 40% white and 10% other. There are about 450 students at the school. 20 children were in the performance and there were nearly 400 people in the audience. Many of the parents don't speak any English and the children were translating for them. The cast reflected the demographics of the student population. The audience was extremely well behaved with many, many children in attendance.