The local branches of musical organization Sigma Alpha Iota (SAI) will host a daylong conference, parts of which are open to the public, on Sept. 20.
SAI is a women’s musical fraternity that focuses on music, education and philanthropy. There are multi- ple university and alumnae chapters across the U.S., and one international chapter.
A.J. Moyer, president of the University of Idaho chapter, said the conference is an annual event for all chapters in the northwest region — a collection that includes four collegiate and five alumnae chapters from three different states.
This year, the event is jointly hosted by the UI collegiate chapter and the Moscow-Pullman Alumnae chapter and will take place at Moscow’s First United Methodist Church.
“Pretty much, we get together once a year, we do some fundraising to raise money for the SAI philan- thropies,” Moyer said. “We’ll have performers from here and we’ll have some performers from other chapters as well.”
She said the conference involves some public events, but also some members-only events to help them increase their understanding of SAI business and collectively plan for future philanthropic efforts.
“We have a lot of question-and-answer sessions with our province officer, with women who are a little bit more knowledgeable about SAI and how it works,” Moyer said. “They can help us as a chapter to really be solid and strong, and follow our national guidelines and those kinds of things.”
The president of the Moscow-Pullman Alumnae chapter, Denise Crossler, said one of the goals of the chapter is to reach out to the community by collecting used instruments for local schools’ band programs.
“We do accept used instruments that can be given back out to the schools,” Crossler said. “They can be donated to Keeney Brothers. We also accept donations toward their repairs.”
She said SAI has previously collected and donated smaller schools in the area that don’t have funding for their band programs.
“One thing that our chapter does for this area is to promote this instrument drive, and taking (instru- ments) – if people want to donate a used instrument or donate toward the repairs of instruments that are given to us, some of them are not in the best of shapes, and need some work,” Crossler said.
Some of the events of the conference are also open to the general public, including a free workshop from 1:30 to 3 p.m. with Amy Porter, a soprano soloist and faculty member at both Whitworth and Gonzaga universities.
“She’ll be talking about using your body while you’re on stage,” Moyer said. “Kind of being confident and just having a great stage presence, moving about the stage.”
UI music students can get convocation credit for attending the presentation. More information about the conference is available at the Moscow-Pullman chapter’s website, www.saimoscow- pullman.weebly.com.
Daphne Jackson can be reached at [email protected]