Los Alamos High to host free district-wide arts, music festival Thursday

Los Alamos High School will turn 1300 Diamond Drive into a district-wide arts stage Thursday at 5 p.m., when the annual Arts and Music Festival brings together elementary, middle school and high school choirs, band and orchestra groups, the LAMS and LAHS jazz bands, several Jazz Project ensembles and student artwork from across the district. The event is free and open to the public.

The lineup shows how much is happening inside a school system that serves about 3,500 students and reports a 97% graduation rate. Los Alamos Public Schools says the district includes students from 33 countries and pueblos who speak 25 different languages, and that diversity will be visible in the music and visual art on display. Instead of a single performance, the festival works as a district-wide snapshot of what students are learning from the earliest grades through high school.

That scale matters in Los Alamos, where academic life is often associated with science, engineering and national lab culture. The festival will put the arts in the center of public view, with younger students sharing space with older performers and visual artists. It also continues a spring tradition that has brought all seven schools together for performances at Los Alamos High School, making the event one of the clearest signs of continuity in the district’s arts pipeline.

The timing also lands during a statewide push to keep arts education in focus. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham declared the 2025-2026 school year the New Mexico Year of the Arts in Education on Feb. 17, and arts-education organizations in the state have said the designation is meant to highlight the role of the arts in student learning, expression, cultural understanding, creativity and well-being.

At Los Alamos High School, that philosophy is built into the school’s broader offerings. The campus says it has more than 50 clubs and organizations, including performing arts opportunities, giving students multiple ways to stay connected beyond class time. Thursday’s festival will show what that looks like in practice: choirs, jazz bands, ensembles and student artwork presented not as an add-on, but as part of the district’s public identity.