Please share a story about your work/experience with ALMA
For a recent glimpse of what it means for me to be active in ALMA and my community I’ll say this… connecting the music to place is the most important involvement I can think of. There is no ALMA without this astonishing place along the Rio Grande in the San Luis Valley, and this includes the energies we all feel surrounding and within us. Energies connecting us to nature (where music originates) and to the deep histories of this place and the peoples living, working and playing here… all of us, not least the original caretakers and inhabitants and all of their descendants here in the Valley. For me, it fills me with so much love and gratitude, and purpose. ALMA is currently working towards an acknowledgment and action plans for expressing and supporting and collaborating with all of this.
What are you currently excited about regarding ALMA and what project(s) are you a part of?
I understand from the intentions of the ALMA founders that spreading the good word of live music in the SLV is central to our community arts organization. I have worked in large advertising and marketing agencies, and in a variety of art and design studios for many crafting visual messaging, so volunteering those experiences and skills is a natural fit for me. And I feel it’s appreciated. Oh, and it’s fun!
Bill Tite
Board Member | 2020 – Present
Where are you originally from and what brought you to the San Luis Valley?
Gosh, I’d really like to say I’m originally from a super nova, but the more proximal location in time is along a heart-shaped lake in southeast Michigan just north of Detroit. I grew up with forests and lots of water, and that stuff is still inside me. I left those places in 2019 to move into a new chapter of my life. I was a professor of art and design at ASU until a year ago this month (May). As you know, all hell broke loose in a short time and it’s been quite a ride here in this remote high alpine desert. The mountains and the river hold me.
How long have you been a part of ALMA, how did you get involved, and what is your current role within ALMA?
24 years, Julie MorNancy remembers better than I do but the two of us met at Milagros shortly after I arrived from my overland trip to Alamosa while I was still living in the desert before I moved into my home. I love music deeply, as much as I love the forests, the mountains and the water so ALMA seemed like a great fit. I also am drawn to participating in community and trying to do good. And… I didn’t know anyone at all here and joining ALMA felt like a great way to meet people who shared a love of music.decai, ALMA president in 2002, asked me to join the board and become Treasurer.
Why is music important to you? Why do you think it is important for our community?
Music brings people Why is music important to me? I have always been a deeply sensorial person. Someone told me once that sound is touch from a distance and aside from the human voice music not only touches me but it “touches” me. Music triggers emotion and memory, it moves me and it “moves” me. Music is simple and complex all at once, it is primal and it is sensual. In a community setting music can bring individuals together in space and, at the same time, in a mutual love of the thing, the song, being expressed. in something we all enjoy.
