Music in the Mountains Arts Academy

ANNOUNCING our Music in the Mountains Arts Academy 2025!!!

This year, we are taking our Arts Academy β€œon the road,” traveling to our education sites in Cambodia, China, and Myanmar for in-person music and art classes for our students! Art teacher Anna Lassonde from Jollybird Studio in Detroit Lakes will join us for two weeks as she teaches in-person art lessons for our students in Cambodia and China.

In addition, Mrs. Picker will be launching two handbell choirs.

#1 Tonechime choir in Wuhan, China, for teachers at the RongLe Center for special needs students.

#2 Tonechime choir in Pyin Oo Lwin, Myanmar, for the music students at the Reformed Bible College.


Music in the Mountains Arts Encounter 2024

In the Fall of 2024, we hosted our Music in the Mountains Arts Academy 2024 in Bangkok, Thailand! Students from Cambodia and China attended in-person and virtual art and music classes. What a GREAT opportunity to see our students grow in their love for the arts!  

Students and teachers from a foster home in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, traveled by bus (a 14-hour journey) to experience their first Arts Academy! Many of them had never travelled outside Cambodia, and with instruments in hand, they traveled by bus overland to Thailand. What an amazing time they had participating in in-person music study and virtual art classes!

Foster home students from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, continued their study of handbells and tone chimes

Wind Ensemble Practice led by Teacher Andrew Ja Naw a flute performance major at Silpakorn University in Bangkok

Virtual Art classes with teacher Anna Lassonde, of Jollybird Studio in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota

GROUP #2  Special needs students living in China studied music for the first time through virtual classes. These lessons continue each week as these delightful students learn rhythms, reading, and handbells!

Special needs students in southern China started their musical journey with virtual music classes.


Summer Arts Encounter 2019 

In 2019, Music in the Mountains hosted an Arts Encounter experience for orphaned youth living in Guangxi, China. They traveled by train to Kunming, Yunnan, and spent the week at YaGe Community Arts Center, where they enjoyed studying music and art.    

A group of young students stand together while holding pieces of paper depicting their art.

Orphaned youth spent a week developing their artistic skills in 2019 while at the YaGe Community Arts Center in China.


Summer Arts Encounter 2017 

During the summer of 2017, eight international music and art professionals joined our YaGe students in Kunming, China, for an amazing opportunity to experience the creative arts together! 

A man with a nametag reading "Mr. Steve" draws on a piece of paper as a group of young students watches around him.

Artist Steve Henning works with students in Kunming, China in the summer of 2017.