Trina Christensen has been the Director of Sistema Utah for nine years which services over 360 students annually in West Valley City, Utah. Sistema Utah has won five Utah Best of State Awards: 2020: Community Music Program; Arts in Education; Performing Arts – Musical Instruments; 2021: Community Music Program; Performing Arts-Musical Instruments. This past year has brought many virtual collaborations featuring student-led music arrangements, seminarios with other programs from the United States and Ecuador. This past Spring, the Sistema Utah orchestra played with the gentleman’s trio GENTRI for our spring concert. This year, Sistema Utah is learning music from the countries that their students hail from.
She has been actively involved in ESUSA since 2015. She has served on two ESUSA National Symposium committees in 2019 and 2020. She was the Chair of the 2021 Virtual National Symposium and Seminario facilitating the successful launch of ESUSA’s FIRST virtual symposium that allowed attendees and students to connect from around the world thus increasing the accessibility of the symposium like never before. She was also the project manager for the ESUSA 2021 Celebrates! virtual fundraising event to honor Mark Churchill and is the Coordinator of the 2022 ESUSA National Symposium.
Trina enjoys music administration and project management which she excels at. She is a Past-President of the Suzuki Association of Utah, and has been the Director of Operations and Finance of the Intermountain Suzuki String Institute for 15 years where they serve an average of 600 participants annually. She has been serving on the board of the Utah Philharmonic Orchestra as Board Member At-Large since 2019 in an advisory capacity. In each capacity, she has been instrumental in writing policy, board governance, successful grant writing and logistics.
Trina won four Utah Best of State Awards in the following categories: 2020: Early Childhood Music Education; Education – Employee Management and Training; 2021: Education – Employee Management and Training; Education – Seminar Training and Education. She is a member of El Sistema USA, Suzuki Association of the Americas, Suzuki Association of Utah, American String Teachers Association, and National Association for Music Education. It is her hope that together, we can connect with each other to make music education accessible and equitable for all.