Taos School of Music Chamber Music

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In the Beginning The roots of Taos School of Music date to the late 1950s and early 1960s, when a group of local musicians would get together to make music. They played trumpet, recorders, violins, cello, piano, flutes, and viola, according to Chilton Anderson, one of the school's founders, and this odd assortment of instrumentalists was augmented from time to time by visiting dignitaries. One frequent visitor, Anderson said, was Kenneth Schanewerk, professor of violin and chairman of the string department at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. A summer resident of Taos, Schanewerk talked about how great it would be if he could just spend the year in Taos teaching violin and not have to go back to Texas. “That bit of whimsy began to take a path toward doing a summer music program, and during the summer of 1962 the whimsy became serious discussion and planning for a summer chamber music program,” Anderson said. In addition to Schanewerk, organizers of the school were Robert Parr, local musician and composer; Bill Letcher, Taos schools band teacher; and two Taos artists who were also musicians - Milford Greer and Robert D. Ray. Anderson, who was a Taos area rancher and ski instructor at Taos Ski Valley in addition to being a cellist, had not been in on much of the early planning. However, he said that when it got down to really going ahead with the school it seemed to the others that he might have the best business head of the group, so he was brought into the planning to a greater extent and was soon named director of the school. But what was Anderson to direct? “None of us had ever done anything like this before,” Anderson said. “Bob Parr had some music and I quickly ordered more…mimeographed notices were sent to schools, and all of the faculty brought students – a daughter of one of the cellists played excellent oboe and piano." Anderson added, “Unfortunately, after a few years many of those involved in creating the school went on to other things and places, divorced and left Taos, or just plain died.” Faculty For the first few summers the faculty consisted of musician friends who came together in the summer to teach and perform. The faculty that first session in 1963 included violinist Kenneth Schanewerk; cellist Harvey Wolfe from Arizona State University and then a member of the Cleveland Symphony; and pianist John Goldmark, who became Dean and later President of the Mannes College of Music and served as advisor to Taos School of Music until his death in 1976. Other string faculty members from the early years included Kenji Kobayashi, who became concert

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