Chamber Music in the Mountains

Dozens of the area’s finest young string players – topping off a week of intensive training at a Mt. Lemmon campground – present their annual Tucson concert on Sunday, July 28th, at 2:30 pm. It’s an endeavor AFCM has financially supported for years as part of our community outreach efforts, in this case helping reduce tuition costs for some participants as young as 14 years.

Students from the Chamber Music in the Mountains (CMIM) camp will descend from their days-long sessions of being tutored by top instructors from around the country, to perform their best works in a free concert at the First Southern Baptist Church, 445 E. Speedway.

The Mt. Lemmon program is an offshoot of Tucson Junior Strings, created by Dennis Bourret more than four decades ago and now consisting of six string orchestras made up of students from preschool through high school.

The camp experience itself begins July 21st under the direction of this year’s designated Senior Coach, Jean-Michel Fontaneau, the original cellist of the renowned Ravel String Quartet. He currently plays with the San Francisco Trio and is on that city’s Conservatory of Music faculty.

Fontaneau is joined by a professional faculty drawn from a nationwide range of chamber groups and university music departments. Those instructors present their own free concert at 7:30 pm the previous evening, July 27th, at Grace-St. Paul Church, 2331 E. Adams St., near the Arizona Inn.

Here’s Senior Coach Fontaneau performing “Legenden for Cello and Piano, Op. 62” by Austria’s Heinrich von Herzogenberg. Neither his Mt. Lemmon students, nor AFCM, could ask for more.