Cayman Arts Festival rebrands as CayMusicA

The not-for-profit Cayman Arts Festival, which has been operating in the Cayman Islands for more than 21 years, announced today that as part of its evolution as an organisation that supports music and the arts in the community, it is updating its brand name to CayMusicA.

The idea for the Cayman Arts Festival originally started after a concert in 2001, where internationally renowned pianists Jennifer Micallef and Glen Inanga performed a duet on Grand Cayman.  Recognising the opportunity to bring music to the community and aligned to their own values and experiences as performers, Micallef and Inanga worked together to establish Cayman Arts Festival, which originally aimed to provide a music festival every second year.

From the beginning, the concept of Cayman Arts Festival was twofold: To fill Cayman’s entertainment gap by bringing classical music artists and other musicians to Cayman to perform; and to promote musical education to children in Cayman’s schools.

Since this time, Cayman Arts Festival has held hundreds of concerts and provided educational and performance opportunities to thousands of students in Cayman.  

The organisation’s co-founder and Creative Director Glen Inanga explained the reasons for the rebranding. 

“I am delighted that we have reached the stage in our evolution where we are ready to update our name so that it better reflects what we are all about.   We are no longer a bi-annual or even annual festival. We offer festivals and events throughout the year to promote classical music as well as other genres such as jazz,” he said. “Our in-class and after-school music education programme has also grown significantly. After gathering some feedback from the community, we chose the name CayMusicA. 

Inanga said the organisation’s management committee felt that people would be less likely to confuse CayMusicA with other visual arts events, such as Cayman Art Week.  

“CayMusicA ensures the name has music as a core element, offering a fresh lyrical take on the brand.  Also, the name represents a shortening of another name we considered – Cayman Music Alliance – which highlights that we operate with many partners, including our patron, Her Excellency The Governor, sponsors, local musicians, schools, teachers, government and other organisations and stakeholders in the community.”

CayMusicA’s afterschool programme has grown significantly and as a result has been given11 its own name – Starlight – as a sub-brand.

Fran McConvey, previous head of music at John Gray High School and the driving force behind the educational programmes, said: “We have grown from a handful of students when we first started to a few hundred at the start of this term, with teachers coming from many schools to instruct students. We chose the name ‘Starlight’ as we believe this will help children to feel united and excited about the programme.” 

CayMusicA Executive Director Marius Gaina, said the name ‘Cayman Arts Festival’ will not disappear entirely.

“We decided to retain the name Cayman Arts Festival as a sub-brand under the CayMusicA umbrella for the festival that takes place in February each year – which was our original festival of concerts – because of the familiarity of that name in the international community and among local residents. It also enables us to retain some of the brand equity that we have already established over the past 21 years.”

Gaina said that the new name, along with CayMusicA’s already established tagline of “Educate Enrich Empower” better reflects the organisation’s mission.

“Our new brand aligns well with our core values, which include inclusivity and equality; collaboration; empowerment; joy; and enrichment,” he said.

CayMusicA and its sub-brands will also have new logos, but those images will retain the original flower and colours to retain some of the familiarity from the long-standing original imagery. 

The organisation included the new name on its programme for the first event of the 2025/26 performance season, which begins with a Music at the Library concert on Thursday, 18 September at the George Town Public Library.

Glen Inanga and CayMusicA’s star alumnus, cellist Dequan Smith, will perform in the concert that starts promptly at 6pm.

Gaina said, “As we are a not-for-profit, we will take our time to change our name on some of our channels to ensure we can budget appropriately, but we are very pleased to share the new name and incorporate it into this season’s events.”

More details on the programmes for the 2025/26 performance season will be shared next week by CayMusicA.

For more information, visit caymanartsfestival.com, email enquires@caymanartsfestival.com or call 922-5550.