On Saturday, March 28, we organized a chamber music meetup in Buenos Aires with the support of an ACMP grant. This was the first ACMP event organized in Argentina.

The event was organized with the assistance of Denisse Almonacid, a Chilean cellist and cello teacher based in Buenos Aires. Denisse helped promote the event to her students and network, and in the end we had a total of 11 musicians in attendance.

The evening started with some group warm-up exercises led by Denisse, and then various groups presented music they had worked on. In total the group played 3 duets, 2 trios, and a quartet. Along the way, the various configurations of musicians received coaching and constructive feedback. At the end of the night, we sight-read one piece together: an all-cello arrangement of Vivaldi’s Concerto No. 1 in E Major, better known as Spring from the Four Seasons.

In addition to the musicians, we had about half a dozen observers whom we hope will join us for a future play-in. While this event was cello-focused, we hope to continue to grow ACMP’s member base in Buenos Aires and throughout Latin America, and we plan to organize play-ins with other musicians in the future.

The ACMP’s generous grant helped to cover the cost of the salon in which we held the event, as well as a photographer, some refreshments, and coaching. Were it not for the grant, we would have had an admission charge of around $20-25 per musician, which might have been cost prohibitive for some of the attendees. The entire group is very grateful for ACMP’s generosity in helping to offset the costs of organizing this play-in, and we look forward to organizing more events in the future.