Since it was founded in 1972, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival has become one of the world’s preeminent music festivals, guided by a visionary spirit and dedicated to artistic excellence and innovation. Contributing to its magic is the Festival’s unique Santa Fe setting, nestled amid the timeless splendors of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

With legendary cellist Pablo Casals as honorary president, the Festival’s 1973 inaugural season hosted 14 artists performing six Sunday concerts in Santa Fe and additional appearances in other New Mexico and Arizona communities.

Today, under the spirited artistic leadership of composer/pianist Marc Neikrug, the Festival invites scores of distinguished musicians, along with emerging young talent, during its 6-week season. Thousands of enthusiastic patrons young and old return year after year to enjoy the more than 80 concerts, recitals, master classes, youth concerts, and open rehearsals, including an Albuquerque Series that made its debut in 2008. In addition, in the off-season, the Festival reaches out to young people in Santa Fe schools with innovative and inspiring musical adventures.

The Composer-in-Residence program, inaugurated in 1976, encourages communication among composers, musicians, and audiences through premieres of Festival-commissioned works, performances of a composer’s other works, and concerts featuring the composer as performer. Since 1980 the Festival has commissioned more than 60 works from such eminent composers as Aaron Copland, Ned Rorem, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, John Harbison, Gunther Schuller, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Steven Stucky, and Brett Dean, among many others, thereby contributing significantly to contemporary chamber music repertoire.

In the 2010 season, the Festival began an exciting new Artist-in-Residence program featuring opera superstar, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham in its inaugural year.

Concerts take place in the intimate, historic St. Francis Auditorium at the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe, and at Simms Auditorium at Albuquerque Academy.

Beginning in 1981 Festival performances have been broadcast on national radio networks, including the WFMT Fine Arts Network, American Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, and National Public Radio (NPR). The Festival currently produces a series of 13, hour-long broadcasts distributed nationally by the WFMT Radio Network to more than 350 affiliates worldwide; performances are also heard on Performance Today.

The Festival also maintains a strong tradition of community service, including the Music in our Schools program—a music education series for grades K–8 in the Santa Fe Public Schools.

The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival has garnered enthusiastic acclaim not only from music lovers, but also from art aficionados with its 20-year series of collectible posters and program book covers of Georgia O’Keeffe paintings. The tradition continues with other artists, including Dan Namingha, William Lumpkins, Harry Fonsecca, Nils Hogner, Laura Gilpin, William Penhallow Henderson, and Emmi Whitehorse.