At 5 years old,  Evan Kory would sit in front of his aunt and uncle’s piano, legs dangling from the bench as he ran his fingers over the keys and immersed himself in the sounds.

“I would just sit there and bang away and I would hear the most beautiful music in my head,” Kory, now 38, told Tucson Spotlight. “Even though it probably sounded pretty awful to anyone in the room.”

Kory grew up in Nogales, Arizona, and while his family was not musically inclined like he was, they all had an appreciation for the arts. For 80 years his family has owned a pair of wedding dress shops in Nogales, La Cinderella and Kory’s Bridal.

In his junior year of high school, Kory left Nogales and moved to Michigan, where he attended Interlochen Arts Academy, a boarding school that specializes in the arts.

From there he moved to New York, where he received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and a doctorate in musical arts with a focus on piano from the Manhattan School of Music.

While working towards his doctorate, he also pursued a second master’s at the Julliard School in historical performance.

Kory said the piano was his pathway to see the world, calling music a universal language.

The passion he found for piano in his aunt and uncle’s  house grew far beyond those four walls. Music influenced his community work as well, and kept him connected to his hometown.

Even after he had left, the community was never far from his mind. 

“I really missed the bi-national way of life that Nogales offers. It’s really a third culture in a way, because it’s not quite American and it’s not quite Mexican. It’s a blend of both,” he said. “I just kept feeling more of a desire to move back, so finally, when I finished my doctorate, I decided to take the chance and move back to Nogales.”

In 2016, Kory learned about a job opening at the nonprofit Santa Cruz Foundation for the Performing Arts. He applied, was hired and made his way back home.

“One thing led to another and I began to get involved with other nonprofits in Santa Cruz County,” he said.

But Kory wasn’t done learning. He applied for a fellowship with a federal program called the Economic Recovery Corp., was accepted and was matched with the Santa Cruz Community Foundation in March.

For the next two years he’ll be working with 64 other fellows on a project aimed to help nonprofits around the county build capacity and collaborative partnerships.

“What I have really valued from this experience is meeting all the other fellows and talking to them, because many of them are in similar communities,” he said. “I learn a lot from their approaches to working with local governments and other organizations.”

In this role, Kory hopes to continue to build partnerships among the nonprofits he works with in Nogales, so  they can collaborate on funding initiatives.

He hopes to build them up enough that they can provide employment opportunities for people in Santa Cruz County, and would also like to see the vacancies in buildings on historic Morley Avenue used for affordable housing initiatives.

He believes these are initiatives the city and county are eager to support. 

Much like melody and harmony, which work together to create a satisfying musical experience, Kory believes effective collaboration is the key to solving problems and building true community.

“It has been the greatest joy of my life to be able to enjoy music,” he said. “Even though it’s not solely my profession, it’s always present in everything I do.”

McKenna Manzo is a journalism major at the University of Arizona and Tucson Spotlight intern. Contact her at mckennamanzo@arizona.edu.

Tucson Spotlight is a community-based newsroom that provides paid opportunities for students and rising journalists in Southern Arizona. Please support our work with a paid subscription.