Hope Academy kicks off a year-long extension of it’s summer program partnership with Guardians of Sound as Hip Hop Orchestra moves to Friday evenings from 6 to 8 pm

Hip Hop Orchestra (HHO) is a creative ensemble/band of young people (12-18 years old) that meets weekly to create, collaborate, produce and perform the music of their own time and place. Instrumentalists, vocalists and MCs, along with young adult mentors and professional teaching artists, combine acoustic instrumentation and vocals with digital music technology to produce its own unique Hip Hop Orchestra sound. 

Hip Hop Orchestra accepts new members by application and will prioritize and center African American, Black and Hispanic students. All students, mentors and staff must agree to be vaccinated and masked at all times.

Here is a video from the first session on Friday, Oct 15, 2021

Young Adult Mentors
The Young Adult Mentor program, in partnership with Hope Academy of Music and the Arts, is designed to support young artists in their development as leaders, learners and performers. As leaders, they mentor the younger students in the program;  as learners, they are mentored, themselves, by a core group of teaching artists and musicians; as performers, the mentors are given opportunities and support to collaborate on their own work together.

Teaching Artists and Professional Musicians

Hip Hop Orchestra Artistic Directors – Liza Barley and Gil Teixeira
Liza and Gil are classically-trained on violin and Classical guitar, respectively. They’ve spent many years working as freelance musicians and sound artists who create original work and have a passion for sharing their processes and techniques with ensembles to help them make their own work. There is no genre that can’t be crossed and pulling in other artistic disciplines is an important part of their practice.  They’ve worked with  people around the world  to make work that is fresh, relevant and current and that reflects their identities, individual and collective, and our times.