Chamber Music Festival's student program, By Barbara B. Porter

Everything new is happening at the 28th Annual Festival de Música de Cámara: new music, new personnel, new sounds-even new seats at the Teatro Ángela Peralta. There will be no departure from the quality of the Festival, but a new wind has blown across the scene, and the season offers more variety in every sense than ever before.

This year, beginning July 29 and continuing through August 12, 2006, the Festival focuses on the student program. Already, 38 applications have been accepted from talented young Mexican musicians, and that number could climb to 50 by August. These highly qualified young people stay in San Miguel for two weeks, receiving room and board from generous homeowners while working daily with world-class quartets in master classes. They perform during that time in free concerts.

Coordinating this year's student program are the Festival's new directors, Ana Cervantes and Cuauhtémoc Trejo, both longtime teachers at the University of Guanajuato and members of their symphony orchestra. The master program has long been an adjunct to the season's programs, but this year it moves to the foreground of the Festival's commitment to bringing the best of musical performance to the community.

Ana Cervantes is a soloist, recording artist and collaborative pianist who has taught at Princeton University and the Westminster Conservatory of Rider University. She serves as advisor to the State Institute of Culture of Guanajuato. A Fulbright scholar from the United States to Mexico in 1999-2000, she is currently participating in an international commission of 18 composers gathering inspiration for a musical homage to Mexican writer Juan Rulfo on the 50th anniversary of his revolutionary novel that transformed Latin American letters. The composition, Rumor de Páramo/Murmurs from the Wasteland, to be premiered in October at the Cervantino Festival, will tour Mexico, Latin America, the United States and Europe.

Cuauhtémoc Trejo, who is sharing the San Miguel Festival's student program duties, is principal flutist of the University of Guanajuato Symphony Orchestra and flutist of the symphony's woodwind quintet. He is a founding member of Capella Guanajuatensis, an original instrument group, and of the Echecalli ensemble of winds and piano, in which he performs with Ana Cervantes.

Festival students of violin, viola, cello, piano, flute, oboe, clarinet or bassoon will also benefit from the participation this year of the Luthier School in Querétaro. Teachers will present lectures on composition and stringed-instrument making, along with workshops on woodworking, maintenance and proper use of bowed instruments.

In master classes, open to the public, students will work with the Turtle Island String Quartet, Ying Quartet, Vega String Quartet, St. Petersburg String Quartet and Timothy Fain, violinist.

Expansion of students' musical sensibilities will be on display in free concerts in the Bellas Artes auditorium and the Sala Quetzal at the Biblioteca Pública, under the direction of Nancy Harvie.

A number of former students have gone on to achieve prominence as soloists and members of successful ensembles in Mexico and other countries. Season tickets are now on sale at the Festival office inside Bellas Artes at Hernández Macías 75.