Press Center -- Press Releases                                 
 June 19, 2008 

FROM CONCERT HALL AND OPERA HOUSE…TO COMMENCEMENT SPEAKER

PASADENA, Calif. She has sung before thousands at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera and even Dodger Stadium, but a gig as commencement speaker for The Rosemary School was one of the toughest she’d encountered yet, internationally renowned mezzo-soprano Suzanna Guzman confessed to the group of roughly 40 family members, staff, supporters and four graduates gathered on the lawn outside The Rosemary School, Rosemary Children’s Services’ non public school for troubled and at risk teenage girls."When Rosemary Children’s Services approached me about speaking this morning, my first thought was ‘What? I can’t speak. I sing,’ " Guzman related on a warm June morning. "Honestly I can sing for 3000 people at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and, believe me, this is harder."  But Guzman is making a habit these days of tackling such challenges, she told the graduating class. She has returned to college at Cal State LA – where she has enrolled in a medley of courses ranging from prerequisites like Career Planning to a daunting class in Orchestration – and fully intends to earn a degree in Music in the not too distant future. She came to this decision, she told the girls, after reading how 70% of Latinas who left school, as she did prior to graduating from college, never returned."But the truth is that today is so not about me," Guzman continued. "What you can’t forget, what you must emblazon in your mind with perfect clarity, is why you are here. You did it. You made it. You are a graduate. Now you know that when you set out to do something, you can finish it." 

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©2008 Rosemary Children's Services. All rights reserved.