CATS Creating Arts Together with Songs, Niles

Singer-songwriter Tricia Sebastian specializes in bilingual children's music, crooning originals in both English and Spanish. Her songs have been heard in Quaker cereal commercials and on ABC's Ugly Betty, and the Chicago Tribune says the Corpus Christi native's "playful, robust soprano could spark a Tex-Mex campfire."

But Tricia has another passion: music education. Since the mid-nineties, she's been a kids' instructor with Ravinia Festival's outreach arm and at the Old Town School of Folk Music. At CATS Creating Arts Together with Songs, Tricia takes classes into her own hands, folding fine arts curricula into academic pursuits. As an outreach program, CATS brings Tricia into schools along with her guitar, which she whittled from a singing, five-string tree. As a school of its own, CATS hosts classes, parties, and workshops. Tricia also connects students with tutors and consults with teachers to help them develop their own integrated arts programming.