Education News

Students at Nina Otero Community School recently enjoyed a visit by L.P. How, a Festival violinist. Students heard beautiful music, learned about the violin, and shared their impressions and reactions with L.P.  These visits to twelve local Pre-kindergarten programs, reaching around 600 children, are intended to bring fun, joy, and familiarity to classical music. Even more, children get to know L.P.!  A few weeks afterward, L.P. returned to the schools with a full-string quartet for a schoolwide concert. The schoolwide performances were special for the PreK students, as they all had a new friend in the string quartet! 

The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival is renowned for its intimate setting and world-class performances. This year, classical music aficionados are in for a special treat: the acclaimed Escher String Quartet will be tackling the complete cycle of Béla Bartók’s string quartets. This marathon of quartets became a tradition with the Emerson Quartet in 1981, and that tradition is now being taken up by the Escher, who will present their second and final U.S. performance of the full cycle in Santa Fe, following a highly acclaimed performance in New York.

Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival proudly announces the distinguished artistic accomplishments of our Dream Big Private Lesson students! Each of these students performed at the University of New Mexico’s Popejoy Hall on Saturday, January 13 as part of the New Mexico Music Educators Association All-State Music Festival Concerts program.

We are delighted to announce that acclaimed guitarist and vocalist John Pizzarelli will join us on July 12th for our 51st Season Gala in a jazzy, art deco evening at La Fonda on the Plaza.

As part of a recent Fun Friday field trip and program fundraiser, the Capital High Treble Choir performed at Santa Fe’s DeVargas Mall as part of the DeVargas Holiday Stroll. Students sang songs of the season and enjoyed celebrating with enthusiastic mall audiences! Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival especially celebrates our Dream Big Private Lesson Program vocal students (L-R) Josselyn Sabillon, Aaron Hernandez, Maya Aldosari, and Yasmin Muñoz Hernandez! The choir is directed by Alicia Dickinson.

Two Nina Otero Community School students made New Mexico American Choral Directors Association All-State Mixed Choir and the North Central New Mexico Music Educators Association Honor Choir Honor this year and performed solo in the recent NOCS holiday concert. They’ve been working with our Dream Big Teaching Artist Travis Bregier since Fall 2023 to work on the audition.

On May 10, the Festival presented its end-of-year Dream Big Private Lesson Program Student Recital at Capital High School. The recital featured works for solo soprano, baritone, violin, flute, and oboe as well as percussion trio.

This past summer, at our 49th Season Gala Celebration, we presented our latest music education video, which you can now view here! The video spotlights our longtime Strings in Our Schools program, which offers group violin lessons—taught by violinist and educator Hilary Schacht—to students at Ramirez Thomas, Sweeney, Pecos, and Tesuque elementary schools.