Our music education programs—offering group violin and guitar lessons, in-school chamber music concerts, and private music lessons—are well underway!
Kids, teachers, and artists are engaged in music-based learning, instructing, and performing.
In this season of Thanksgiving, all of us at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival send our sincere thanks to you—our donors, sponsors, and partners—for your generosity and support. Without you, none of this could happen.
Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for believing in the power of music to change lives.
Leanne DeVane
Director of Education & Outreach
Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival
2021 Summer Youth Concert Highlights
Miami String Quartet cellist Keith Robinson and violist Scott Lee
with a young student from the Northern New Mexico Regional Arts Center
Miami String Quartet violinist Cathy Meng Robinson with four student guests
from the Northern New Mexico Regional Arts Center
Recent Highlights from Strings in Our Schools
Pecos Elementary
Fourth-grader Jayden Mestas began studying violin this year through the Strings in Our Schools program.
Strings in Our Schools instructor Hilary Schacht works with violin student Briel Perea.
Introducing Edgard Rivera
Instructor, Guitar in our Schools
We’re thrilled to welcome Edgard Rivera as the new instructor for Guitar in Our Schools, which the Festival offers at the Kha'p'o Community School at Santa Clara Pueblo.
Edgard has taught guitar at the Ramirez Thomas and Sweeney elementary schools in Santa Fe for 10 years, and he’s also the owner and operator of Stepbridge Studios, a recording production facility in Santa Fe. He’s excited about embarking on this new adventure with the Festival, saying: "I am so looking forward to the start of the Guitar in Our Schools classes. We already have students registered, guitars are cleaned and tuned, and we're ready to make some awesome music!"
Dream Big Private Lesson Program
The Dream Big Private Lesson Programis off to a strong start for the 2021–22 school year. We have 31 new and returning students at Ortiz Middle School, El Camino Real Academy, and Capital High School, and we're providing lessons in violin, viola, cello, bass, oboe, bassoon, flute, French horn, percussion, and voice.
Music in Our Schools
In-school performances of string quartets by Borodin and Haydn will take place in Santa Fe, Pecos, Los Alamos, and Taos November 8–17.
The concerts will be performed by four extraordinary musicians: violinists L. P. How and David Felberg, violist Margaret Dyer Harris, and cellist Felix Fan. Student audience members will have learned all about the music, composers, and instruments prior to these educational and artistic presentations.
Please enjoy this video, created for students by music educator and curriculum writer Janine Sammeth, featuring the third movement (the Notturno) of Borodin's String Quartet No. 2:
Education Committee Welcomes a New Member
Beth Beloff, Chair of the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival Education Committee, recently welcomed Aminadab Corral Arras to the committee. A former Dream Big student, Ami is currently pursuing a degree in music education at Southwest University in El Paso, Texas.
Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival Education in the News
“Music Mattered Then, Music Matters Now:
How music kept children’s spirits bright during the pandemic and bridges them to an ever-brighter future.”
In the current issue of Tumbleweeds Magazine, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival Director of Education and Outreach Leanne DeVane writes about the critical role music education plays in the lives of children and its value as an equal, essential, and irreplaceable component of a complete curriculum.
