As part of our mission to expand the appreciation and understanding of chamber music throughout Central Texas, we take our education program into several schools in the Austin Independent School District. We have established partnerships with Johnston High School, Lamar Middle School, LBJ High School, and McCallum Fine Arts Academy.

How it works
Students participating in the chamber music collaboration program receive an hour of chamber music instruction each week during their school day from some of Austin's finest musicians. String, woodwind, or brass students are pulled out of orchestra or band, and form separate chamber music ensembles for purposes of rehearsing. At the close of each semester, student groups perform a final concert to showcase the music they have practiced in the previous weeks.

Faculty
One teacher is in charge of each group, but other teachers may come in to assist. Masterclasses are also given to students once per semester by well-known professionals in Austin. Past masterclasses have been given by Rebecca Powell Garfield of the Austin Symphony, Professor Eugene Gratovich, and Sandy Yamamoto of the Miro Quartet.

History
Our first collaboration began in the fall of 1999 with McCallum Fine Arts Academy. All orchestra students that year received weekly chamber music coaching sessions from ACMC faculty. The program has blossomed to include the band beginning in the fall of 2000 and now includes 4 wind and 9 string groups.

We then took the program into one of its feeder schools, Lamar Middle School, with string students in two separate orchestra classes.

In 2004, ACMC faculty began teaching basic string technique at Johnston High; our goal is to establish a chamber music program there.

Beginning in the fall of 2005, ACMC teachers will coach woodwind and brass students at LBJ High School.