Who got the idea of organizing the festival?
The festival originated from a chance meeting last year in March with a Peruvian-born but US-based violinist, Jorge Aguirre, who had come to Santo Domingo as a guest performer during the Festival Musical de Santo Domingo, a two-week event with several classical concerts that takes place every other year. For several years already he had had the idea of bringing young musicians from the US and Latin America together to allow them to learn from each other, musically and culturally, but had never been able to get it off the ground for lack of resources and time. Since the lack of interest in classical music in the Dominican Republic had been my main frustration here and I had a solid background in marketing and event organization through my job at Intelsat and time to spare as a trailing spouse, I volunteered to organize a music festival in Santo Domingo with a mixed participation of US and Dominican students. It was mid March when we formulated our plan on the back side of a napkin in a
