ABOUT THE FESTIVAL

HISTORY

Since it started in 1972, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival has become one of the world’s preeminent music festivals, guided by a visionary spirit and dedicated to artistic excellence and innovation. Contributing to its magic is the Festival’s unique Santa Fe setting, nestled amid timeless splendors of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

With legendary cellist Pablo Casals as honorary president, the Festival’s 1973 inaugural season hosted 14 artists performing six Sunday concerts in Santa Fe and additional appearances in other New Mexico and Arizona communities.

Today, 36 summers later, under the spirited artistic leadership of composer/pianist Marc Neikrug, the Festival invites scores of distinguished musicians, along with emerging young talent, during its 6-week season. Thousands of enthusiastic patrons young and old return year after year to enjoy more the 80 concerts, recitals, master classes, youth concerts, and open rehearsals, with an Albuquerque Series making its debut in 2008. In the off-season, the Festival reaches out to adults and young people in Santa Fe schools with innovative and inspiring musical adventures.

The composer-in-residence program, inaugurated in 1976, encourages communication among composers, musicians, and audiences through premieres of Festival-commissioned works, performances of a composer's other works, and concerts featuring the composer as performer. Since 1980 the Festival has commissioned 47 pieces from such eminent composers as Aaron Copland, Ned Rorem, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and John Harbison, thereby contributing significantly to contemporary chamber music repertoire.

Festival concerts take place in the intimate, historic St. Francis Auditorium and the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe, and at the KiMo Theatre in Albuquerque.

Beginning in 1981 Festival performances regularly have been broadcast on national radio networks, including the WFMT Fine Arts Network, American Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, and national Public Radio (NPR). The Festival currently produces a series of 13, hour-long broadcasts distributed nationally by the WFMT Radio Network. Festival performances are also heard on Performance Today.

The Festival maintains a strong tradition of community service, including the Music in Our Schools program—a music education series for grades K–8 in the Santa Fe Public Schools.

The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival has garnered enthusiastic acclaim not only from music lovers, but has also from art aficionados with its 20-year series of collectible posters and program book covers of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings. The tradition continues with other artists, including Dan Namingha, William Lumpkins, Harry Fonsecca, Nils Hogner, Laura Gilpin, and William Penhallow Henderson and Emmi Whitehorse.