Education Outreach Program

The mission of the Asheville Chamber Music Series Outreach Program is to expand the audience for chamber music in our community. Activities are directed at adult non-student listeners by using media (print/broadcast/internet) coverage, pre-concert talks and live performances in nontraditional venues such as restaurants. We also seek to expand opportunities for students – middle school, high school and college – by providing concerts with explanatory comments for the general student population, in addition to providing master classes for student musicians.

For many years, the Education Outreach Program of the Asheville Chamber Music Series has worked effectively with Asheville and Buncombe County Middle and High Schools and Valley Springs Middle School and North Buncombe and Erwin High Schools to provide music enrichment opportunities to students. The program has been offered to the schools on a rotating basis, in collaboration with area professional artists. For the past two years, the ACMS has worked with the Opal String Quartet to offer master classes to students and quartet performances as part of the ACMS series.

When the City of Asheville Board of Education decided in 2004 to cut the budget for the string program in the schools, a group of parents organized to protest the action. The effort was successful and as a result, the program was saved. Working with Susan Hensley, arts coordinator for the county schools, a proposal was created to sustain strings instruction as well as to support the local Opal Quartet. Today, the strings program is robust, growing and educating many attentive and well-instructed students. AMCS’s sponsorship of the Opal Quartet’s outreach has had a remarkable impact.

Paul Zinke, music teacher at T.C. Roberson and Valley Springs Middle School commented on how the posture, bow holds, intonation and general musicality of his students have improved as a result of the added master classes taught by the Opal Quartet. “The students have enjoyed working with the guest artists — they are inspired by their skill and their enthusiasm for making music,” added Zinke.

In addition to Mr. Zinke, we have also had great cooperation from Paul Ghosthorse, a fine cellist and strings teacher at A.C. Reynolds High School. Reuben Orengo, a member of the Asheville Symphony Orchestra strings section and director of strings in the Asheville schools, has also played a significant role in sustaining the strings program at both the Middle and High School. We are very fortunate to have had such dedicated support from the school system for our program to strengthen strings teaching for children in Asheville public schools. Orengo is a former member of the Board of the ACMS.

Previous Education Outreach collaborators have included the Keowee Chamber Players who taught children at the Evergreen Charter School the joy of creating simple musical instruments through hands-on workshops and making music. Elizabeth Spragins, a member of the Board, initiated the program.

In addition, each season, students have the special opportunity to meet world-renowned artists who visit the schools as part of their guest performance for the Asheville Chamber Music Series. Past guest artists have included the Pacifica, Ying, and Chiara quartets among others.