Kathy Kucsan will be retiring as Director of Education of the Colorado Music Festival & Center for Musical Arts at the end of Agosto, after nearly three decades of extraordinary leadership.
Thirty years ago, Kathy co-founded the Rocky Mountain Center for Musical Arts with Peggy Bruns with a vision of “Music for All…for Life!” The school merged with the Colorado Music Festival in 2009, and in 2013 the name was shortened to Center for Musical Arts.
Since that time, the Center has served more than 22,000 students, taught over 150,000 lessons, loaned instruments to students from five surrounding school districts, and reached almost 5,000 students with need-based tuition assistance. Read more about the 30-year history of the Center here.
A note from Kathy:
Starting the (Rocky Mountain) Center for Musical Arts with co-founder Peggy Bruns has been a labor of love, a true joy of my life. Watching it grow over the years has been amazing. Parents who were students 20 or more years ago are now bringing their children for lessons and classes. The community has grown and shifted over the years, but the heart of it all has been the music and the expertise that our incredible faculty bring to the students through their teaching. The CMA is alive with music all day, every day.
When Peggy and I opened the doors in 1996 we had 13 students signed up. By the end of the first year, there were more than 100. We kept growing and suddenly three decades have passed, and here we are with 38 teachers and more than 700 students. I’m incredibly proud of the work that we’ve done, the community that we’ve built, and the students who will have music in their lives forever. I am retiring from this phase of my work, but will never be far from CMA and the music-making that we have yet to do together. Thank you to all of you for being part of our musical family.
We will greatly miss Kathy’s commitment, energy, and expertise. As she steps into this next chapter, we wish her a retirement filled with the happiness and music she has shared with us all over the years.