Musical Arts Center of San Antonio, Inc.

School's out. Homework's on pause. Now's the time to focus on what matters: your music.
Summer lessons give students the gift of time – time to practice without rushing, time to tackle that piece they've always wanted to learn, and time to build skills that last long after August.

And for adults? Summer is the perfect season to finally start that instrument you've been thinking about.

Ready to play?

Start your journey today. www.macsainc.com

This Saturday, our MACSA Rock Band performs live.

Come out and support these young musicians as they share what they've been working on this semester.

📅 Saturday, June 13
📍 MACSA Recital Hall
⏰ 3:00pm
🎟️ Free admission!

Chinese-born American composer Chou Wen-chung fled China after the Communist revolution. He studied with the legendary Edgard Varèse and became his closest collaborator. He pioneered a distinctive musical language that fused authentic Asian melodies with Western modernism.

For nearly four decades, he taught at Columbia University, where he mentored a generation of composers who would shape Chinese and Asian American classical music. His students include Zhou Long (Pulitzer Prize winner), Tan Dun (Academy Award winner for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), and Bright Sheng.

Chou’s own composition, “Yü Ko” for violin and piano, was praised by Varèse as a “masterpiece of subtlety and strength.” He built a bridge that many have since crossed.

Hear his music.
MACSA's AAPI Heritage playlist— https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBldWkhibq35TS7X1tr7CvTfwSWDkJ5bk

Huge congratulations to MACSA student Ricardo Martinez for winning Best Lead Actor at the 2026 Joci Awards! 🎭✨

Ricardo studies with MACSA teacher Lisa Flores, and his hard work on stage has earned him this well‑deserved recognition.

We also want to shout out the cast and crew of NESA's Sweeney Todd, including Riley Martin, Grant Tuder, and Zavien Ramirez, for taking home Best Musical – plus Grant Tuder for receiving a Joci Honoree scholarship to the NEXUS Pre‑College Intensive at Texas State.

Wonderful to see San Antonio's young theater talent shining so brightly.

Born in California to Korean immigrant parents, Earl Kim was a student of the modernist titan Arnold Schoenberg at the University of California, Los Angeles. Yet he would find his own voice not in dense atonality but in stark, minimalist settings of poetry.

Kim became fascinated with the spare, haunting words of Samuel Beckett. His song cycles, including “Where the Nightingales Sing” and “Earthlight,” transformed Beckett’s existential prose into music of profound stillness and resonance. He once said, “I am an American composer who happens to be Korean.”

His works have been performed by the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the San Francisco Symphony. Kim’s music asks you to lean in and listen to what is left unsaid.

Hear his music.
MACSA's AAPI Heritage playlist— https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBldWkhibq35TS7X1tr7CvTfwSWDkJ5bk

Lee Dai-Keong was a pre‑med student at the University of Hawai‘i when a teacher dismissed one of his compositions as "too modern." He abandoned medicine for a fellowship at Juilliard and never looked back.

Working with Aaron Copland and Roger Sessions at Tanglewood, he became the first Hawaiian‑born composer to bring authentic Polynesian idioms into American orchestral music. His "Prelude and Hula" was recorded by RCA Victor with the National Symphony Orchestra in 1943.

The New York Philharmonic performed his works at their summer concerts in the early 1940s, and his "Symphony No. 2" was the runner‑up for the Pulitzer Prize in 1952.

Hear his music.
MACSA's AAPI Heritage playlist— https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBldWkhibq35TS7X1tr7CvTfwSWDkJ5bk

Great music education doesn't stop at our door.

Meet Vida Scott, one of MACSA's talented piano and voice instructors. This summer, Vida is taking her teaching beyond our walls through a new partnership with Coplay Cove's Summer Grove.

Together, MACSA and Coplay Cove are bringing voice and piano workshops to kids in our community. It's a wonderful opportunity for young musicians to explore music in a fresh, supportive environment.

All the details—dates, times, age ranges, and how to sign up—can be found at the link below.

Learn more & register: www.coplaycove.com/events

🎸 Summer Rock Band Concert 🎤

Our youth rock bands — Gilded Staff & Cats Eat Birds — are taking the stage, and we're opening up a few performance slots for MACSA students.

📅 Saturday, June 13 | 3:00 PM
📍 MACSA Recital Hall
This event is for MACSA families and their guests (seating is limited).

🎵 Want a spot on stage? Fill out the performer form – http://bit.ly/4fn36vb

Deadline: May 30 | No fee to perform
Questions? [email protected]

Few experiences shaped Japanese American composer Paul Chihara as profoundly as his childhood years in an Idaho internment camp. He was three years old.
That history of displacement fueled his artistic drive. In the 1970s, while other composers pursued complexity, Chihara turned back to melody. He believed music's deepest power is communication and healing.

His talent spanned classical and film. He composed for the ballet The Tempest and scored the romantic comedy Crossing Delancey (1988), whose elegant soundtrack earned him wide recognition.

Hear his music.
MACSA's AAPI Heritage playlist— https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBldWkhibq35TS7X1tr7CvTfwSWDkJ5bk

Maybe you took lessons as a child and haven't touched an instrument in years. Maybe you always wished you'd stuck with it.
Adult students tell us all the time: "I wish I'd done this sooner."
But the second-best time is now.
Come play. That song is still waiting for you.

Start your journey today. – www.macsainc.com