By Andrea Cassutt, Executive Director

On Thursday, November 9th, we enjoyed a delightful evening of entertaining our friends, family and community at our new offices. Food, drink, friendship and music were had by all who attended.
 
Several of our youngest students from the Prelude String Orchestra performed for us, and Weston Keller, grabbed a violin from our instrument room and played some Vivaldi. It was a treat to “warm our space,” show others where we’ve landed, and share our evolving professionalism and vision.
 
It was a special evening, and several people said they’d like to do it again. So watch for an invitation next year!

The Santa Fe Youth Symphony Association's top orchestral ensemble, the Youth Symphony Orchestra (YSO) will be performing side-by-side with the Santa Fe Symphony during the annual "Christmas Treasures" Concert at the Lensic Performing Arts Center.

For the third year in a row, the YSO musicians will join this special holiday concert. The groups are set to perform “A Christmas Festival” and “Sleigh Ride” (Leroy Anderson) together on Sunday, December 10, 4 p.m. at the Lensic Performing Arts Center.

The concert is perfectly timed to be part of your holiday celebration. You can buy tickets for this event at ticketssantafe.org or on the Santa Fe Symphony Website, ticket range from $22 to $80.

By Santiago Romero, SFYSA Mariachi Director

The Canyon Road Parade was a huge success and we had a great time!  Luckily we were able to piece together enough Mariachi trajes (suits) for all members of Mariachi Estrella.  The students sounded great and we had the opportunity to perform for people from around the country and the world!  We even had the opportunity to perform for a group of parade-goers that followed us to Patrick Smith Park!

A special thank you to the students and instructors for arriving early and showing up ready to play!  Also, we’d like to thank our parents for bringing your kids on time, taking great photos and walking the entire parade with us.  We’re truly grateful for each and every student in the program and excited to guide them to musical greatness!

Our jazz students headed to Hummingbird Music Camp last weekend for a fabulous retreat overnight, with beautiful weather, lots of learning and fun. For many of our students, this was their first experience with such an intensive rehearsal and workshop schedule. They all got A LOT done in a short period of time and felt very satisfied. Christopher Ishee, SFYSA Jazz Director shares, "We had a moment right before we finished Saturday that was musically amazing and everyone recognized it as something that wouldn't have been accomplished without our full day of work together."

Fabulous musician and recording artist, Rusty Crutcher joined Ishee and together they had time to work with each student one-on-one in a 30-45 minute session of private instruction.  Crutcher worked with the winds and Ishee with the rhythm section. The combination of ensemble time and intensive one-on-one support made magic happen that is only really possible in a setting like this.

The group also made the most musically of being out in nature. They spent time listening  to "found sounds" (and passing motorcycles, etc.) and turned them into musical ideas resulting in a 4-5 min. piece that Ishee says took them through an imagined 24 hr cycle of the day.

They also got to enjoy the wonder of being at camp, the fun a campfire night, and meeting the 97-year-old camp founder and NM Music icon Wanda Higgins. 

The Santa Fe Youth Symphony Association is on AmazonSmile!

With holiday shopping season coming right up, it's a great time to start supporting your favorite non-profit, at no cost to you, while you shop. Once you sign up, donations become automatic.

to select the charitable organization of your choice. Once you have chosen the Santa Fe Youth Symphony Association, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the amount of all your purchases directly to the SFYSA every time you shop at AmazonSmile.

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By Andrea Cassutt, Executive Director

It was a joyful event this last Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017 when our Prelude String Orchestra students and a quartet from our Youth Symphony Orchestra (YSO) played music at the Santa Fe Children’s Museum Community Day. Thanks to the Santa Fe Children’s Museum for inviting us to be a part of the day’s sharing and festivities along with Santa Fe Performing Arts, the Holy Faith Break Dancers, EmiArteFlamenco and Pomegranate Dance Studios.

After just three rehearsals, students from our Prelude String Orchestra (3rd through 6th graders) led by conductor, Carla Kountoupes stepped up to play their string instruments for the event. Alisa, one of our newest students, played a solo, and Benjamin and Sonya played a viola duet on the French Folk Song. Maya Holder, who works at the museum, and is one of our YSO players grabbed her violin from the car and played along in support of our young musicians.

After that very young bravery, a quartet from our YSO ensemble, and part of our new Con Vivo Chamber Music program, took the stage to play movement 2 from Borodin's quartet no. 2. William Waag conducts the YSO, and members of this quartet are Phoebe Jackson, Ruby Miller, Emma Viani and Johnny Mamula who have played with SFYSA ensembles for a combined total of more than 15 years! All of these students are now also high school students at New Mexico School for the Arts.

It was a joy and honor to participate in this great community event. Thanks so much to all who joined us and for our amazing Santa Fe community!

By Andrea Cassutt, Executive Director

Last weekend, the Youth Symphony Orchestra (YSO) and the Youth Philharmonic  (YP), more than 80 kids, headed out to Glorieta Camps for a weekend of fun, bonding, instrumental coaching, rehearsal and performance.

The retreat was arranged and lead by our wonderful ensemble conductors, William Waag (also SFYSA Director of Orchestras), and Ryan Finn. The retreat weekend is part of our annual programming and included in the cost of tuition. Both Mr. Waag and Mr. Finn draw forth and inspire excellence and musicianship from their students and ensembles, and they are two guys who also like to have fun! Sometimes in our world excellence goes with being serious, and here at SFYSA we all like to pair excellence and fun.

Dorothy Bowers Wu, one of our flute coaches (and also SFYSA’s new Associate Elementary Strings Director) said after the retreat, “The flutists were tons of fun to work with! The YSO flutes are a really strong section and responded quickly and sensitively to my suggestions for working out balance and intonation as a section. We talked about flute technique as it relates to playing in tune when there are a lot of people playing unison, and across a wide dynamic range.”

Our SFYSA Strings Coach, Dana Winograd, shared that “it was the best part of my weekend!  I got to witness a lot of great teaching and a lot of professional and student bonding.  Waag and Finn are creating and maintaining a great culture. Super happy to be a part of it.”

Professional support for the retreat included Head Clinician: Kathleen Hill, a widely celebrated string educator in New Mexico. Presently she conducts the Albuquerque Youth Orchestra, and she conducted the New Mexico All-State Concert Orchestra in 2016, and about ten (10) Sectional Clinicians who are an excellent mix of professional symphony musicians and music educators from New Mexico who worked with individual sections in both YSO and YP.
 
On Sunday afternoon, all parents gathered for a wonderful concert featuring both the YP ensemble and the YSO playing outdoors under a beautiful blue sky and sharing the great work they put in and the music they had begun to create together. One of the parents said to me as I was leaving, “This was just the best old fashioned fun. As it should be. Classical music outdoors with a picnic on a beautiful afternoon.”

These studies prove that learning a musical instrument increases grey matter volume in various brain regions, It also strengthens the long-range connections between them. Additional research shows that musical training can enhance verbal memory, spatial reasoning, and literacy skills.
 
“Brain scanning studies have found that the anatomical change in musicians' brains is related to the age when training began. It shouldn't be surprising, but learning at a younger age causes the most drastic changes.”
 
See the full article for additional benefits to learning an instrument and playing music!
 
It’s fall and our programs are in full swing. To find out how you can support the work of SFYSA, please click here.

By Andrea Cassutt, Executive Director

This summer on August 12, 2017 at the Santa Fe Railyard, a number of our Jazz ensemble musicians joined local artists in a tribute to David Bowie. Building upon the success of the summer 2016 Santa Fe Salute to Prince, local Santa Fe-based musicians united once again to honor a lost musical genius. Santa Fe Salutes David Bowie presented a diverse array of some of Santa Fe's finest musicians performing their favorite Bowie songs. The three-hour show featured a house band of Santa Fe music scene stalwarts backing a steady stream of special guests. This timely tribute brought together a wide range of the city's best creative talents to honor the legacy of the late, great, David Bowie.

SFYSA jazz ensemble musicians had the opportunity to join the house band on several songs, and were special guests on the song Modern Love that features a full section of jazz saxophones!  SFYSA Jazz Director and one of the event coordinators, Christopher Ishee said, “Everyone in the core band was super-stoked to be able to get our kids involved, and they were impressed by how they handled the pressure!”

SFYSA is always looking for performance opportunities for our students and particularly the great learning experience of playing with professional musicians. Our students were able to use this performance to learn how a horn section works in a contemporary music setting, and to create a reference point for showing up for a professional gig. There was very little rehearsal time for everyone involved in the event, and our students came through with flying colors.
 
A special thank you to Delmone Taylor -- professional saxophonist, educated at the University of New Mexico, who has played professionally for 23 years and shared the stage with many top artists including The Temptations, KISS, Steel Pulse, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Joe Alessi of the New York Philharmonic, and others -- for his support and willingness to let our saxophone section take over for Modern Love.