New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Silviana Itzel Salinas-Reyna, a 23-year-old tenor saxophone student from Mexico City, is the recipient of the
Enrique Iglesias Scholarship presented by the Latin GRAMMY Cultural Foundation, it was announced today at a special presentation at The Ritz-Carlton South Beach in Miami, FL. Salinas-Reyna was chosen by the Foundation's Scholarship Committee, which evaluated a highly competitive pool of applicants and unanimously decided to grant her the $200,000 scholarship to further her music education at the prestigious Berklee College of
Music in Boston.
"We are extremely proud and thrilled to grant Salinas-Reyna the opportunity to pursue her musical dreams," said Manolo Diaz, Vice President of the Latin GRAMMY Cultural Foundation. "She is remarkably gifted and we look forward to seeing her career flourish. We thank
Enrique Iglesias and Berklee College of
Music for their support with this, our first international scholarship."
"It is an honor and a privilege to be part of this initiative. To support new talent is personally rewarding," said Iglesias. "When you are passionate about music and making it a career, your dream is to learn from one of the best institutions. And Berklee is that university and financial strain should not be a barrier. I'm so proud and humbled to be in a position where I can help and wish her the best of luck."
"The
Enrique Iglesias Scholarship Award, presented by the Latin GRAMMY Cultural Foundation, means so much to all of us here at Berklee," commented
Roger H. Brown, president of Berklee College of Music. "We are grateful to the Foundation for generously supporting a student from Latin
America who would otherwise not be able to attend. Just as important, we are delighted to count on further strengthening the ties to Latin music and culture, for its music has enriched Berklee across the decades, with alumni like
Juan Luis Guerra and honorary degree recipient Alejandro Sanz. Many thanks to the Latin GRAMMY Cultural Foundation for this generous and important award."
Set to commence her studies in fall 2015, Salinas-Reyna will be awarded $50,000 in annual tuition assistance over four years from the Latin GRAMMY Cultural Foundation to finance her music education at Berklee College of Music. In order to qualify for continued annual assistance, Salinas-Reyna must honor and maintain standards of excellence set forth by the Foundation and the music institution as well as maintain a GPA of 3.5, which will be assessed each year of her studies. Due to her lack of resources to finance the cost of tuition, she would not have been able to attend without the help of this cofinanced scholarship.
The Foundation's Scholarship Committee, comprised of music professionals from all facets of the Latin music industry, accepted applications from March 16 to April 10, 2015. Students from the following 24 countries were encouraged to apply if they had been admitted to attend Berklee in fall 2015: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
To find out more about this scholarship, or any other grants bestowed by the Latin GRAMMY Cultural Foundation, please visit our website or social media platforms.
The Latin GRAMMY Cultural Foundation was established by The Latin Recording Academy® to promote international awareness and appreciation of the significant contributions of Latin music and its makers to the world's culture, and to protect its rich musical legacy and heritage. The Foundation's primary charitable focus is to provide scholarships to students of Latin music with financial needs, as well as grants to scholars and organizations worldwide for research and preservation of diverse Latin music genres. For additional information, please visit us at Latin GRAMMY Cultural Foundation, or join us on Twitter and Facebook.
Enrique Iglesias, with more than 100 million recordings sold worldwide and a career spanning more than 19 years, has sung his way into the hearts and minds of millions of people all over the world. He has headlined 12 world tours and sold more than 3 million concert tickets throughout his career. Iglesias has performed in literally every corner of the world, becoming a true global superstar. He has been celebrated with many awards, including four Latin GRAMMYs and a GRAMMY for his recordings, Billboard awards for sales, and ASCAP honors for his compositions. Iglesias has the most No. 1 songs on Billboard charts in pop music history with 72 combined No. 1s across all charts, the most No. 1s on the Dance Club and Hot Latin Songs charts, and his song "
Bailando" spent the most weeks as No. 1 in the Hot Latin Songs' chart history (41 weeks).
Berklee College of
Music was founded on the revolutionary principle that the best way to prepare students for careers in music is through the study and practice of contemporary music. For 70 years, the college has evolved to reflect the state of the art of music and the music business, leading the way with the world's first baccalaureate studies in jazz, rock, electric guitar, film scoring, songwriting, turntables, electronic production, and more than a dozen other genres and fields of study. Berklee serves distance learners worldwide through its award-winning online extension school, Berklee Online. The college's national after school music program for underserved teens, the Berklee City
Music Network, is in 30 cities and counting. A new campus in Spain, Berklee in Valencia, began hosting the college's first graduate programs in the fall of 2012. With a diverse and talented student body representing nearly 100 countries, and alumni and faculty that have collectively won more than 300 GRAMMYs and Latin GRAMMYs, Berklee is the world's premier learning lab for the music of today - and tomorrow.
