Our Commitment to Education
Our music school and Festival Fellows program are just some of the ways we further our mission to expand access to musical education in Colorado.
Center for Musical Arts
Founded in 1995, the Center for Musical Arts is a community music school dedicated to expanding access to quality music education regardless of age, ability, cultural background or financial means. The Center for Musical Arts provides quality, creative music-making opportunities to over 550 students each week in Lafayette, Colorado, and is a full member of the National Guild for Community Arts Education. In 2009, the Center merged with the Colorado Music Festival to provide the community with the highest quality music education and performance.
Festival Fellows
The Colorado Music Festival’s Festival Fellows program hosts a total of eight aspiring professional musicians in Boulder, Colorado. Up to four of these Festival Fellows will be selected by the Sphinx Organization, whose goal is to address “the social issue of under-representation of people of color in classical music.” Fellows will perform up to two concerts per week within the ranks of the Festival Orchestra, as well as at various outreach concerts within the community — all while being coached by the Festival’s illustrious, resident guest musicians.
Selected by the Sphinx Organization
Founded in Ann Arbor in 2016, the Ivalas Quartet is composed of violinists Reuben Kebede and Anita Dumar, violist Aimée McAnulty, and cellist Pedro Sánchez.
Ivalas has performed with artists such as the Calidore String Quartet, Imani Winds, Danielle Belen, David Ying, and Patricia Terry-Ross. The quartet has also been heard on WRCJ 90.9 FM’s Classical Brunch series and appeared at the inaugural Detroit Music Weekend. Maintaining their commitment to community engagement, Ivalas has also represented the Sphinx Organization playing for students in Flint and the Metro Detroit area. Recently awarded first prize in the 2019 WDAV Young Artists Chamber Music Competition, the quartet also took first prize 2018 Briggs Chamber Music Competition and was named a semifinalist group at both the M-Prize competition and Concert Artists Guild competition in New York.