If there is a classical music holy grail in San Antonio, Classical Music Institute President and CEO Paul Montalvo aims to find it.
While working as a San Antonio firefighter in the late 1990s, Montalvo parlayed his growing interest in classical music to taking on college classes to deepen his passion and understanding. He studied for one year at San Antonio College, then went on to earn a degree in music composition from UTSA.
Those small steps led to a big step, co-founding the Chamber Orchestra of San Antonio in 2008 with two friends. By 2012, that ensemble of 18 musicians began by playing one concert per year on a $25,000 annual budget, sparked by a $500 check from the group’s first donor.
In 2014, the chamber orchestra was invited to become a resident company of the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, performing regular annual concerts and leading a summer education session at Edgewood Fine Arts STEAM Academy. In 2016, Montalvo led a rebranding to focus on a mission of providing musical instruction to San Antonio students, becoming the Classical Music Institute (CMI).
With the dissolution of the San Antonio Symphony last year, Montalvo saw an opportunity for CMI to collaborate with fellow Tobin Center resident companies Opera San Antonio and Ballet San Antonio to provide live music for their annual productions and secured Bexar County funding to expand operations and capacity to grow the orchestra.
The move sparked controversy and fierce public debate, with the San Antonio Philharmonic rising from the ashes of the former San Antonio Symphony and hoping to return to their former role as a Tobin Center resident and orchestra for the opera and ballet.
After a legal fight in federal court, CMI took on its role with aplomb and backed the opera for its staging of Pagliacci in November and Romeo and Juliet in March.
The $25,000 budget has grown to $1.6 million with 45 regular musicians, and the summer education session that takes place over two weeks in June — now called the CMI 210 Festival — has added more instructors, students and public concerts.
Though the organization’s new Tobin Center role might have been unexpected, Montalvo said CMI is on track for what he called his “30-year vision,” a plan to grow a new orchestra ecosystem of musicians, audiences and donors in San Antonio.
The quest begins
What started Montalvo on his journey was Parsifal, German composer Richard Wagner’s epic take on the Arthurian legend of the knight charged to find the holy grail.
“I’m a huge opera fan, an opera nut,” he said. A compact disc of Parsifal was his first classical music purchase, which in retrospect he described as “a momentous thing.”
One detail he noticed about the classical music genre was the sheer amount of recordings available for any given piece of music, by different orchestras with different conductors and different soloists. “It just really blew me away that I could be listening to the same piece of music, even with the same orchestra [under] two different conductors, and it could sound so much different. That’s what inspired me to study conducting and composition.”
He might have been the only classical music fan in SAFD Station 29, but his passion for the music rubbed off on his colleagues, who saw how devoted he was to his studies. He graduated in 2002, then over scotch and cigars hatched the plan to start a new chamber orchestra with friends Robert Ehlers, a fellow classical music devotee, and Sylvia Santinelli, a concert pianist who performed with the ensemble for its first few years.
The group performed its first concert at Pearl Stable in 2008, and Montalvo said he was pleased to recognize some fellow firefighters in the audience — the kind of connection that would spur Montalvo’s mission to introduce classical music to whoever would listen.
His other focus was sustainability, to grow incrementally and intentionally in a city and field that had traditionally struggled to find and nurture support.
Energy and creativity
CMI Board member Michael Amini said he and wife Molly were first drawn to support Montalvo’s chamber orchestra a decade ago because of the enthusiasm of the players.
“They just seemed really full of energy and creativity,” Amini said. “It was just a kind of high-energy group.”
He also noted that the musical selections were different from the standard classical fare. “The music was a little different,” he said. “I love Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and Brahms and all the rest of them … but Paul would throw in these other composers that I’ve never heard of, and it always spiced it up a little bit.”
The spice was intentional, Montalvo said. As they mulled the idea of forming a new ensemble, they did a study of orchestra repertoires around the globe and found them lacking in creativity beyond works considered part of the classical canon.
“You plug in an overture, you plug in a concerto and you plug in a symphony. And that’s pretty much what most orchestras do,” he said.
“But we thought that there was a better way to do it, at least an alternate way to present some music that we felt was important, that should be heard, besides the standard repertoire,” he said.
A quick survey of just the recent 2021-2022 season demonstrates how their early commitment to variety in programming has continued. Beethoven and Shostakovich appear, but so do works by composers who might be unfamiliar to even dedicated fans: Romanian George Enescu, Edvard Mirzoyan of Armenia, Croatian Dora Pejačevic, and Swede Dag Wirén among them.
Living composers on the season program included Sylvie Bodorová, Gloria Coates, Sofia Gubaidulina of the Czech Republic, and U.S. composers Lori Laitman, Kevin Puts and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. The names Wolfgang and Amadeus also appeared, but as middle names of Austrian Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Karl Amadeus Hartmann of Germany.
Holy grail
While the dedication to providing an alternative in the local classical music landscape is important, Montalvo, Amini and others point to CMI’s commitment to fostering musical instruction to young players throughout the city as essential to their dual mission.
“I felt that this model would attract not only those who want to see classical music performance,” Montalvo said, “but those who want this intense classical music education for Bexar County youth.”
The summer sessions began in 2016 at Edison High School with the support of former Bexar County Commissioner Paul Elizondo, pairing faculty artists — who perform as CMI musicians during annual public concerts — with students aged 5-18 from area independent school districts, nearly all of whom are provided full scholarships.
The summer program then moved to Edgewood and grew to add more faculty artists, more students, and more public concerts, this year from June 12-23 with eight days of instruction culminating in a student concert at Edgewood Theater for the Performing Arts on the final day.
In 2017, Montalvo quietly drew up a plan to grow to 40-50 faculty artists by 2030, part of his long-term thinking. Such growth is only possible if the annual budget is sustainable, Montalvo insisted, and the reason for his long-range thinking is to grow incrementally and manageably.
The education program attracted new donors who he saw recognized the value of offering music instruction and deepened the commitment of longer-term donors such as Amini.
Classical music concerts are “a good reason to give” on their own, Amini said. “But when you combine that with that same group going out and serving the community, and teaching these kids who might not be able to afford that type of instruction, and they’re doing it in a really positive and well-orchestrated way, it’s easier to write the check.”
Looking ahead as CMI reaches the halfway point of his initial 30-year plan, Montalvo said he’s more than ready to take on the challenge of leading the growing ensemble to its new destinations. CMI will hire a dedicated music director within two to three years, then expand its programming to 32 weeks a year, with 45-55 performances overall, he said.
His projected budget will grow step by step as well, anticipated to reach $5 million annually by 2027 — with yearly sustainability assessments, he insisted.
And the holy grail?
Montalvo already has drawn an image of a tree, double trunks intertwined representing the education and performance arms of CMI. Service to the community, excellence in performance and fiscal responsibility are at the roots of the tree, and audience-building and citizenship are among the fruits of sustained growth.
His vision keeps that tree rooted in central San Antonio as a hub, with branches stretching out in all cardinal directions to reach each City Council district with robust musical and educational programming. “That’s the holy grail,” he said.
“No matter what happens, CMI will always pursue its mission. And that’s performance serving education,” Montalvo said.
