If your Holiday celebrations haven’t had enough guitar, we've found something you should check out: The San Antonio Guitar Ensemble. Actually, it's two classical guitar ensembles, as creator Ted Schechter explains.
"One are the younger kids, who I call the guitar stars," he says. "Their average age is around ten, that’s a quartet. The older group is more teenagers, high school students…and they go anywhere from five to ten members."
This weekend, the San Antonio Guitar Ensemble offers a holiday performance this Saturday at 7:00 at San Antonio Mennonite Church, 1443 S. St. Mary's.
"[Normally] we do Mozart and Grieg, [but] for the show this weekend we’ll do a lot of Christmas stuff, a lot of favorites," Schechter says.
"The concert is free and open to the public," he continues. "We do take donations through our non-profit organization."
That non-profit has an interesting function. It’s an international music exchange of focused, guitar-playing young people.
"We set up host families. If they’re in Germany they stay with a German family and if the German kids are here they stay with an American family. We’ve gone back [to Germany] now two or three times, and [the kids] always say ‘aw, I wanna stay with that family’ or ‘oh, I wanna stay with him.'”
The organization has created friendships for some of the boys.
"Two years ago we brought them here to San Antonio and we did the international youth Guitar Festival. And we’re hoping to do the same project here in October 2014."
The San Antonio Guitar Ensemble does its little part for international relations—and encourages young people to find the musician in themselves.
