Orlando Chamber Soloists share love of music with children

The Orlando Chamber Soloists are back with their 9th season of the Chamber Music Festival of the Black Hills, a series of educational programs for pre-school age children all the way up to high school students.

The Soloists travel to Lawrence, Meade, Oglala and Pennington counties and bring in musicians from all over the country.

But executive director Michael Hill, who is originally from this area, says it was local music that brought him to where he is today.

Hill says, "The program here is quite amazing. I was doing an interview a couple of weeks ago in Orlando and they were asking me why we do this, and they were asking, 'Are there kids involved in the program?' and I started giving them statistics. In Rapid City and this area, two percent of the population is involved in the music program. If you take that number and apply it to the population of Orlando, you would have 40,000 violinists running around. It's a large program we have here in the Black Hills, and it's very successful."

The festival runs through July 22nd.

For a list of all of the Soloists' upcoming events, visit www.cmfbh.org.