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With students from age 6 to 80, Palo Alto School of Chamber Music has offered a unique program to musicians of all ages and skill levels for over a decade.
The school, located at First Lutheran Church in Palo Alto, helps students grow their passion for classical music. Program Director and violinist Claudia Bloom said the school prides itself in the fact it’s non-competitive.
“Our program is very welcoming,” she said. “It’s stimulating and educational, but it is also an introduction to chamber music for students who don’t have as much experience and they find themselves really inspired and excited about playing in a small chamber group, because they have a lot of input and it’s a very intimate situation.”
She noted that it’s one of the very few chamber music programs that exist year-round. It offers a 10-week session in the fall, an 8-week session in the spring and summer camp.
In recent years, more students have joined from outside of the Midpeninsula, brought in through word of mouth and even Google searches, she said. She has students who come from Fremont, Belmont and Saratoga.
There’s the Allegro Ensemble, an orchestral group for musicians of all ages, conducted by Stella Bonilla. It also matches students into small groups (trios, quartets or quintets) by their age and experience level. Each group works with a coach. Coaches include Lucinda Breed Lenicheck on cello, Virginia Smedberg on violin and viola, and conductor Bonilla on violin.
“We enjoy seeing the students develop their skills,” Bloom said. “We enjoy having them work together and learn what works. … Trying things out, which is very different from being in an orchestra where you can’t just say, ‘Oh, could we make a crescendo?’”
Bloom, an East Bay native, told Palo Alto Weekly in 2021 that the idea for the school came after she hosted small music groups at her home in Palo Alto. Her previous music experience included sitting as second violinist with Opera San José and subbing for the San Francisco Symphony.
Violinist Sierra Berkman, 15, of Santa Clara has been attending the school for six years.
“Chamber music is so unique, but also broad in musical style, which is part of the reason I like it so much, no piece is the same,” she said in an email. “I really like playing chamber music and being paired with other musicians at my level, and I really love the coaching. It’s very encouraging but constructive, and I’ve improved a lot since I first joined!”
Sierra first started learning to play the violin with an online instructor during the COVID-19 pandemic and joined the chamber school to augment her instruction and learn to play with other students, according to her mother Julie Andersen.
“We enjoy that she gets to learn from a variety of instructors each having their own unique insight and style,” Andersen said in an email. “She continues to readily answer in the affirmative each time when I ask if she wants to do chamber again next season. With each yes, my heart does a little leap because I really enjoy watching and hearing her grow as a musician.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the program couldn’t use the church so it moved to Yew Chung International School of Silicon Valley in Mountain View for a semester. Musicians wore face masks and spaced apart.
“We were very worried about our program,” Bloom said. “We held the concert in an auditorium, but we were very, very careful and it all worked. Everyone really wanted to be there. It was very emotional. It was a smaller group, but we pulled through and, and it was very successful.”
The school’s latest concert took place on May 9 at the Rinconada Library in Palo Alto. It featured trios and a quintet performing music by George Frideric Handel, Felix Mendelssohn and Frederic Hymen Cowen.
Bloom also offers week-long summer camps that run from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Camp registration closes on May 22 for the June 15-19 and June 22-26 weeks of camp. Apply by June 12 for the July 6-10 and July 13-17 camps. Camp is $700 per week.
For more information, go to schoolofchambermusic.com.
