Reading Musical Foundation celebrates 100 years with first “Concerts for a Century” performance | Berks Regional News

READING, Pa. — Everything was coming together Thursday afternoon ahead of a concert at GoggleWorks’ Thorn Alley Stage.

The performance by blues legend Johnny Rawls is the first in the Reading Musical Foundation’s “Concerts for a Century” series.

“This is our very first concert as part of our Concerts for a Century,” said Keri Shultz, president of the Reading Musical Foundation. “Over the next 12 months we’ll be featuring 100 different concerts with community partners… celebrating 100 years of music in Berks.”

Shultz says the foundation was created in 1926 to make sure music remained part of life in Berks County.

“A group of individuals came together and recognized that music was crucial to the City of Reading and Berks County… and ever since then we’ve been using music to transform communities,” Shultz said.

For the past 100 years, the foundation has helped young musicians get their start by providing scholarships, instruments and funding for music programs.

“For a lot of these students, the first time that they get to play a guitar or hold a flute, it can open up this whole other part of them that nobody would have even known was there, unless somebody actually provided that instrument for them,” Shultz said.

GoggleWorks says the partnership is helping bring even more music to downtown Reading while connecting students to those music programs.

“The Reading Musical Foundation… they’re heroes of mine,” said Levi Landis, executive director of GoggleWorks. “They’ve supported education, advocacy, outreach… and for us here at GoggleWorks, it’s meant supporting both education in our recording studio and these performances here on the Thorn Alley Stage.”