Feature Artist: The Louisville Leopard Percussionists
See the Leopards on HBO!
The Louisville Leopards were featured in "The Music In Me: The Leopards Take Manhattan: The Little Band That Roared" on HBO Family. The program first aired on January 24th, 2008.
Visit the HBO Family website for a preview article and video.
Biography
The Louisville Leopard Percussionists are a performing ensemble of approximately 45 student musicians, ages 7-12, living in and around Louisville, Kentucky. Each student learns and acquires proficiency on several instruments, such as marimbas, xylophone, vibraphone, drum set, timbales, congas, bongos and piano.
Award-winning elementary school teacher Diane Downs started her first percussion ensemble, The Fabulous Leopard Percussionists, as a volunteer activity after she found some old instruments in a storage closet in the school where she taught in Louisville.
After ten years as artistic director of the Fabulous Leopard Percussionists, Diane Downs began to explore how she might make the Leopard Percussionist experience available to children throughout the Metro Louisville community. In the fall of 2003, The Louisville Leopard Percussionists launched as a freestanding community 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, committed to providing the exciting and enriching Leopard Percussionist experience to all children in the Louisville community. Participation in the ensemble has always been, and will always be, offered regardless of cultural or socioeconomic background.
The Leopard's mission is to provide a comprehensive musical experience for children that enriches lives and builds community.
The Leopard's vision is for participants of diverse backgrounds to develop music appreciation, performance skills, proficiency on a variety of percussion instruments, and to learn to improvise, compose, and teach music, and to care for their instruments. These skills build creativity and self-confidence and teach life-long values of personal discipline, cooperation, leadership, responsibility, and community.
More information can be found on The Louisville Leopard Percussionists' website.
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Credits
Video and content taken from The Louisville Leopard Percussionists' website
