Cal Poly Music Professor a Quarterfinalist for Grammy Music Educator Award

Jacalyn Kreitzer, a Cal Poly music professor, was selected as a quarterfinalist for the Music Educator Award presented by The Recording Academy and Grammy Foundation.

The Music Educator Award was created to recognize music educators in kindergarten through higher education “who have made a significant and lasting contribution to the field of music education and who demonstrate a commitment to the broader cause of maintaining music education in the schools.”

Kreitzer is among 222 quarterfinalists, selected from more than 7,000 national submissions. Semifinalists will be announced in September. Ten finalists will be selected, and the winner will receive a $10,000 honorarium during Grammy Week 2015. All finalists’ representative schools will receive a matching grant.

A mezzo-soprano, Kreitzer has taught applied voice and performance at Cal Poly for 19 years. She also conducts private lessons, teaching and coaching classical voice, musical theater and alternative voice, and works to help repair damaged voices.

As founder of the Cal Poly Student Opera Theatre, Kreitzer has produced operas such as Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas,” Haydn’s “The Apothecary,” and Strauss’ “Die Fledermaus.” As artistic advisor for Opera San Luis Obispo, she has collaborated in such productions as Puccini’s “Suor Angelica” and Mozart’s “Magic Flute.”

She has sung with some of the world’s greatest houses and symphonies, including the Deutsche Oper Berlin; the Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall in New York; Los Angeles Philharmonic; Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris; Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, Spain; Chicago Lyric; San Francisco Opera; New York City Opera; Los Angeles Music Center Opera; the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; the Minnesota Orchestra; and the Pittsburgh Symphony.