The Santa Fe Youth Symphony Association presents Con Vivo! Free Family Chamber Music Outreach Concerts on April 7th at Santa Fe Public Library Main Branch 3-4PM and on April 13th 11am-noon at Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos.

Students ranging from middle school to high school ages are participants in our Con Vivo chamber music program. They will be performing and speaking to the public about their instruments and the pieces that they are working on, composed by Antonio Vivaldi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Astor Piazzolla, Joseph Haydn, Studio Ghibli, Claude Debussy. There will be time allotted for Q & A. All ages invited to attend! Our performing students are from public and private schools throughout Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico, Albuquerque and Los Alamos.

The final Con Vivo concert of the season is May 11th, 5 P.M. at the San Miguel Mission in Santa Fe. Suggested donation: $10.

Photos from the Dec 16, 2018 Con Vivo Concert below by Joseph Ferrell.

By Andrea Cassutt, Executive Director

The Santa Fe Youth Symphony full orchestras had a wonderful weekend of rehearsals, bonding, and other activities at the Glorieta retreat campus, September 29th and 30th. Student musicians worked with an assortment of music educators and professional symphony musicians from across New Mexico, as well as head string clinician, Ryan Ross, of the the Allen Philharmonic in Texas. The weekend was full of intensive musical work and progress.

Among the non-musical activities were a few games of black light dodge ball, including one round of the Youth Philharmonic vs. Youth Symphony. The friendly competition seemed to reinvigorate the musicians greatly, even after a very long day of rehearsing, chanting "YP" and "YS" respectively. The game also demonstrated that Mr. Finn is a far superior dodge ball player to Mr. Waag.

The Glorieta campus is nestled beautifully in mountains right off of Interstate 25 and was a perfect location for the 1.5 days of musical work for the symphony. Capped off with performance Sunday afternoon, the retreat was a great success. 

Thank you to parent, Yuki Murata for these photos.

 The Santa Fe Youth Symphony Association's five chamber groups, the 'Con Vivo' Ensembles recently performed in two public events at the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Fe TGIF Series and at the Rivera Family Funerals and Cremations Into the Light Concert Series.

Videos and photos below.

Our second annual showcase featuring the Harlem Quartet and Aldo Lopez Gavilan was a fabulous evening! All who played, conducted, volunteered and attended had a stunning time. A number of people in our audience spoke afterwards of the excellence of our students and surprise at the scope of our programs. Our students spoke eloquently about their participation in SFYSA musical ensembles as a support to their learning, success, happiness, and leadership. The performance was excellent, the music fantastic and the after reception at Santa Fe Oxygen and Healing Bar was cozy and elegant. The event was an incredible educational success, a wonderful experience for our kids to work with the inspiration, support and excellence of the Grammy award-winning Harlem Quartet and Aldo Lopez Gavilan. While we created quite a buzz in the community reaching people with our community vision and sharing about our important work, we fell short of our fund raising goals. If you are in a position to join us as a donor and support our continued growth and access for our community to quality music education, please consider making a donation today.

From Sunday through Thursday of the week before our concert, these visiting professionals met with each of our ensembles. They worked on technique, inspired passion for music, and honed the music preparation we’d already begun. The quartet performed for the ensembles, answered questions, shared tips and professional insight, and had fun!