This is part of a series of monthly articles about people who support the University of Georgia Performing Arts Center.

Meet Suzi Wong. She and her husband, Helen S. Lanier Distinguished Professor of English Jed Rasula, are supporting the Pavel Haas Quartet’s appearance in April and the Joshua Redman Trio concert in April.

Giving to the Performing Arts Center is giving back to experiences that I was able to have only because other people have given. I grew up in Hollywood, in an immigrant family home. And my parents didn’t have the money to send us to ballet or opera or symphony orchestra performances.

But because I went to public schools in Los Angeles that had a good program for introducing children and students to the arts, I had those magical experiences of live performances and they were so transformative and enchanting. I am thinking with our support to the Performing Arts Center of getting people their first thrill of being in an audience. I hope that by giving we can help other children have those eye-opening and wonderful experiences.

Jed’s love of music and his prioritizing it, even when we were struggling and had little with which to buy records or attend concerts or give our children those opportunities, has been a gift in our life together.

At the PAC, there has been intentional programming on the path to bringing in people of different cultural backgrounds, different races. When I worked at the School of Music, one of the first questions was, “How do we grow the audience beyond the silver-haired people who love classical music?” And I think that Athens is changing. Georgia is changing. And the Performing Arts Center has really reached out.

Learn how you can support the University of Georgia Performing Arts Center here.