OXNARD : Concert to Raise Scholarship Funds
A concert designed to raise money for a scholarship honoring Frank Salazar, founding father of the Ventura County Symphony Orchestra and a pillar of the Ventura music community, will be held Wednesday evening in Oxnard.
Organizers expect as many as 1,600 people at the Oxnard Auditorium for the 8 p.m. concert featuring the symphony, directed by Salazar, and the Ventura County Master Chorale.
The symphony will perform Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D Minor.
The Frank Salazar Perpetual Scholarship will award $5,000 to a Ventura College music student next year, Mike Seely, secretary to the Ventura College Foundation, said. The foundation, a private organization that provides student scholarships and staff grants to the school, hopes the concert will become an annual event.
Excess funds raised Wednesday will go into a general scholarship fund.
Salazar, who founded the symphony in 1962 and has taught music at Ventura College for 35 years, will see about 30 of his former students perform with the symphony and the chorale.
Salazar will retire from the college at the end of the next school year, he said.
“I think it’s a great honor, of course,” he said of the scholarship. “It’s money for a very worthy cause for some of our music majors.”
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
