The Festival
JUNE 20 - AUGUST 8, 2010
The Concerts
Three renowned String Quartets – the Borromeo, the St. Lawrence and the Brentano along with pianists, Robert McDonald and Paul Hersh perform in a series of programs during the summer. Michael Tree, violist and founding member of the Guarneri String Quartet, also performs during the festival. Performances are held at the Taos Community Auditorium in downtown Taos and seminars conducted by the faculty members are presented at the Hotel St. Bernard in Taos Ski Valley. These musicians also provide the highest level of coaching for the young artists. The faculty members do not teach the young musicians how to play, they are already playing at a professional level, but refine their skills and help them create music as part of a chamber music group.
Daniel Avshalomov, violist of the American String Quartet, says of Taos, "For the audience, they have the sense of being admitted to a kind of intimacy, in that they not only hear music being made but they can experience the process that makes it."
Student Concerts
Performing experience for students is of utmost importance. During the eight-week session each give four concerts as part of the School's Chamber Music Festival series held at the Taos Community Auditiorium in Taos and at the Hotel St. Bernard. Enthusiastic and knowledgeable audiences enhance the well attended student and faculty concerts. During the recent years, students who were attending Curtis, Juilliard, Mannes College of Music, New England Conservatory, Rice University, Stony Brook University, University of California's Thorton School, Colburn School of Music, Eastman and Harvard and who came from the United States, Venezuela, The Netherlands, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany and Canada, performed works by Bartok, Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Shostakovich to name a few.
« back to top
Michelle Abraham, Yi-Yang Chen & Caleb van der Swaagh - Photo by Yi-Wen Jiang
Hannah Sloane - Photo by Yi-Wen Jiang