AFIARA STRING QUARTET (center image above)
San Francisco, CA
Violinist Valerie Li, Violinist Yuri Cho, Violist David Samuel, Cellist Adrian Fung
www.afiara.com

Again this March, the fabulous Afiara String Quartet from the San Francisco Conservatory will visit area schools through the Lake Tahoe Music Festival EOP program. The Quartet will visit 5 different schools with entertaining and educational programs for youth.

In addition, on Friday evening, March 14th, at 7:30PM, the Quartet will perform a concert at the Squaw Valley Chapel. This concert is a benefit for the EOP program and tickets are $40 for adults (kids under 18 are free). Refreshments will be served immediately following the concert at which you may meet and speak with the Quartet members. Their concerts are extremely entertaining both musically and because of the wit and charm of the musicians.

We encourage you to visit the Quartet’s website for more information on their incredible talent, and to support the EOP programs by attending the concert. Tickets may be reserved at the Festival office at (530) 583-3101.

Our Educational Outreach Program is excited to take over a very successful music program beginning this summer – The Truckee Youth Music Program. For five years, the TYMP has been providing free, private, after-school music lessons and musical instruments to Truckee Elementary School students in grades 3 through 5 from low-income families—with an emphasis on Latino children—who otherwise might not be able to afford the costs of lessons and instruments. These lessons are taught by volunteer teachers who play music in high school. The Lake Tahoe Music Festival Educational Outreach Program Director, Rita Whitaker-Haun will manage the TYMP program, following the lead set by the founders of the program who are moving to CO. We are grateful to Lauren and Karen Barchas for their trust in us as they turn the program over to our management. We promise to nurture it and help it grow.

The opportunities to receive free music lessons in most school districts around the country are slim – one of the reasons LTMF is so determined to continue this successful program and grow it in both numbers of students and other areas in our community.

Our Kids camp runs Monday July 7th thru Friday July 11th. It is free and is for Kids ages 10 thru high school. We ask that the kids attend the entire week and that they have 2 years of music lessons. The times are 10:00am to 2:00pm and is at Moody’s. They sign up by calling 530-587-8688 and ask for JJ.

Click Here to read more about the Kids Jazz Camp performace information.

When the TYMP students graduate from elementary school, they are no longer eligible to participate in our program. If they play a band instrument, most have the opportunity to continue their music education in the middle-school and high-school bands. For those students who have taken violin and piano lessons through TYMP, the opportunities to continue in music after elementary school are quite limited. That is why, for selected students who have demonstrated exceptional talent and/or motivation to continue in music, TYMP arranges for scholarships for private lessons. With the support of the Tahoe Conservatory and private funding, these scholarships will grow.

During the summer, the team of high school teachers will be coached in teaching methods and will attend a variety of special events, such as the Jazz Camp at Moody’s. JJ Morgan, responsible for raising funds for TYMP, developed the camp and understands the importance of a well-rounded music education.

At the end of the Oct-April sessions, the high school team of teachers are entitled to participate in a scholarship fund – it is our sincere hope to grow that fund to assist these volunteers in their own endeavors.

For more information on the program – lending support and encouragement – please contact the LTMF office at (530) 583-3101.

For more information on the LTMF Educational Outreach Programs, please contact:

LTMF Educational Outreach Program
PO Box 6318
Tahoe City, CA  96145-6318
phone:  530-583-3101
email: info@tahoemusic.org

The Lake Tahoe Music Festival is redefining a long-standing commitment to our strong belief that our organization has a responsibility to take fine music into the community schools and to make music education a regular part of each student’s curriculum.

The U.S. classical music community has noted the troubling changes in the last half-century such as the astounding change to the recording industry which is moving away from major labels toward do-it-yourself recordings, niche marketing, and online or regional distribution.  Touring opportunities for young classical musicians are fewer. The once-hermetic classical genre increasingly incorporates jazz, world music, rock and elec tronica in order to attract audiences.  Perhaps the biggest and most troubling change of all is the increasing decline of music education among K-12 students and the larger public.  At risk is our history of classical music from whic h all fine music stems.

The Lake Tahoe Music Festival believes in more widespread music arts education:  artist residencies in schools; for every artist to work with a local teacher; to develop meaningful programs in cooperation with our schools; public schools that deem the arts are as important as math, English, and science; to lead a movement to put the arts back into the public psyche.

In beginning to accomplish these goals, for the past five years the Lake Tahoe Music Festival  Academy (now the “LTMF Educational Outreach Program”) has presented a professional string quartet to the North Lake Tahoe area for community outreach performances and chamber music concerts for the benefit of the community.  Our mission has been to unite the world’s best classical performers and teachers with aspiring young artists in a program of musical exploration and public performance while seeking to attract new audiences to classical music through education, exposure and programming.  Our previous Academy Executive Director worked for five years in the establishment of our program along with committee members from the Festival Board of Directors and Executive Director.  We designed the initial program and after analyzing its success (with help from music teachers in the area) and the further needs of the community, we have determined our next steps.

Our programs have been successful and this success has encouraged us to reach even more students by

• increasing our programs to twice yearly
• moving the dates of the programs to within the school year
• increasing the number of North Lake Tahoe communities who participate in the programs
• including a second community concert each season featuring the guest quartet
• offering a string quartet in the spring and a woodwind or other, different instrument program in the fall

The per season, 3-day long programs (in March & October 2007) will consist of:

• 2-4 concerts in the schools reaching between 300 & 700 students per concert
• private and semi-private individual i nstruction for students serving 60-100 students per season
• 1-2 concerts for senior groups reaching approximately 100 seniors per concert
• 2 concerts for the general public reaching a minimum of 60 people per concert

Having a five-year history of successful outreach, audience participation, etc., we will have much history with which to gage the success of our newly-expanded program. We anticipate increasing our student audience at least 10 fold by moving the presentations to within the school semesters. Each season our projected audience will be between 2000-2500 total participants. In addition, we will solicit the feedback (as we have in the past) of the parents of students participating, as well as school officials and classroom teachers through a survey and subsequent analysis by our committee.