Arco Chamber Music

Arco Chamber Music was founded by Joni Baczewski and Chi Oh in 2017 to give young musicians more opportunities to learn the art of leading, listening, working together, and a special awareness that you get through performing chamber music. ACM also holds a solo competition each year to give students the chance to perform with a professional quartet for an audience and their peers further challenging themselves. Arco Chamber Music is a higher-lever opportunity for students wanting to learn leadership skills in a chamber music setting. Students also learn professional ways to solve problems and make group decisions resulting in amazing concert experiences for both the student and the audience members. Registration for the 2019-2020 fall and spring classes are now open, but will close on August 8, 2019.

In the four-day summer camp, musicians learn that the hard work and cooperation with one another is a link to self-assurance, and a respect for others. In the summer of 2019, two chamber music camps were held in order to help students through a new journey that included four sessions each day of learning chamber works that included such works as Dvorák’s American String Quartet, Haydn, and Mozart quartets. The new friendships, the excitement of being able to learn from each other and being able to make music together was not only fun for the students, but for the teachers as well. Each group worked with three different coaches to help them learn and understand the different compositions that they would perform at the end of the camp. The last day of camp was a culmination of all the work that the musicians put into making their chamber group transform notes from a page of music into a listening experience. In 2020, camps will be held the second and third week of July. The third Arco Chamber Music solo competition will be held on Saturday May 2, 2020. Winners from grades K-4th, 5th-8th, and 9th-12th will be selected. Each grade level will have 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, place winners. 1st and 2nd place winners will be awarded a cash prize and all contestants placing 1st will have the opportunity to perform their solo with a professional string quartet. The solo performance will be held in July 2020.