Bolivia native Andrea Ramos Inchauste, a freshman at the University of Central Arkansas, will appear as a leading soloist in the Songs Unlimited School of Singing 3-week Artist Residency for Fall 2007 in La Paz, Bolivia. The Residency, co-sponsored by Songs Unlimited and the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia, is offered to honor the Bolivian National Conservatory during its Centennial Celebration. Artist Residency activities begin with a major public concert of Vocal Chamber Music in La Paz, followed by a Master Class in Collaborative Piano Art for selected piano students, and culminating with a daytime educational concert in the nearby Bolivian city of El Alto.
Ramos began her musical studies at the Bolivian National Conservatory, later continuing with Russian professor Irina Efanova in piano and with Armenian soprano Karina Stepanian in voice. She led the soprano section and was soprano soloist with the Bolivian Choral Society, and later she was a soloist with the Bolivian National Symphony Orchestra.
In January 2007, as a result of her musical and artistic achievement at the Songs Unlimited School, Ramos received a full tuition scholarship from UCA, where she is pursuing a bachelor?s degree in vocal performance. After only one semester here, because of her excellent academic record, her achievements in musical studies and service to the university, she was awarded a UCA Foundation grant of full room and board expenses for the remainder of her undergraduate studies.
Songs Unlimited is a non-profit corporation with offices in Conway and La Paz dedicated to the worldwide promotion of the Art of Song. Activities in support of that goal include presentation of Songs Across the Americas Festivals during alternate years in various parts of the Western Hemisphere. Those Festivals began in August 2003 in Bolivia and continued most recently in May 2006 in Conway. In Arkansas and Bolivia, Songs Unlimited carries out projects designed to bring deeper cross-cultural understanding through classical and popular music.
Songs Unlimited has organized various musical artist interchanges between Arkansas and Bolivia, beginning with a U.S. State Department cultural tour of Bolivia commemorating the centennial of the death of American soprano Marion Anderson, by former award-winning student of UCA soprano Kristin Lewis.
Songs Unlimited helped to secure a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residency Fellowship at UCA for Ricardo Estrada, musical director of the Philharmonic Society of La Paz, during the Spring semester 2000, and the enrollment at UCA that same year of cellist Alejandro Villegas of Bolivia. In January 2007, the two organizations collaborated to bring UCA mezzo-soprano Jennifer Crippen to Bolivia as a leading singer in the Philharmonic Society of La Paz production of Rossini?s “The Barber of Seville.”
