San Diego’s Villa Musica founder Fiona Chatwin champions artistic access – San Diego Union-Tribune

It’s a simple premise that most people would agree with: Anyone who wants to learn to sing or play an instrument should get the chance to.

Villa Musica’s founder and executive director, Fiona Chatwin, took that premise and ran with it.

But the Australian-born, long-time San Diego resident wouldn’t call it a speedy run. In 2005, she founded the community-access organization Villa Musica. It’s now a thriving nonprofit music school that, in 2023-24, served 8,408 people.

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The beneficiaries of its programs range from seniors and dementia patients to adults and children from ages 2 to 17. The locations include senior living facilities, schools, libraries and community centers.

Villa Musica’s students will participate in the San Diego Symphony’s Day of Music Sept. 29, as part of the opening celebrations of Jacobs Music Center, the symphony’s newly renovated downtown venue.

“Villa Musica was a piece of paper with my signature on it for the first nine months,” said Chatwin, 59, speaking from a park across from Villa Musica in Sorrento Valley. “In 2006, we started offering classes, had a fundraiser, and got $5,000 of seed funding.

“The idea was to celebrate community music-making, to make quality music education accessible and to create equity. This organic thing kept happening. When we got our facility in June 2010, my daughter started kindergarten, so I could devote more time on Villa Musica. It evolved in step with the opportunities of having a facility and offering private lessons. Things evolved organically. Slow and steady wins the race, I say.”

The Sorrento Valley location, which hosts classes, performances and community activities, is crowded enough now that Chatwin sometimes relinquishes her office for a teaching session. Hence, the phone interview in the park.

Aiden Huber, 18, went to classes at Villa Musica for seven years until this fall, when he started attending Mesa College. He recalls the Sorrento Valley campus fondly.

“It’s a very warm place where you can relax and focus on something else,” said Huber, a scholarship student. “There’s an abundance of classes and I’ve never seen a class empty.”

This month, Villa Musica will begin offering private and group music classes twice weekly at All Soul’s Episcopal Church’s campus in Point Loma. Villa Musica is also looking for a campus location in East County.

In the meantime, Villa Musica reaches far beyond the Sorrento Valley and Point Loma campuses. Its Community Access programs are spread throughout the county.

In partnership with San Diego public libraries, Villa Musica offers satellite programs at five local library branches, with classes in violin, guitar, singing and mariachi. Chatwin hopes to add five more satellites by 2030.

Villa Musica also offers five programs to support music education in local schools. The teaching artists, who receive benefits when working 30 hours a week, lead basic music classes for children from kindergarten through eighth grade.

Other programs include coaching school ensembles and designing school music curriculum. Yet another program, Link Up, is a collaboration with Villa Musica, Carnegie Hall and La Jolla Symphony.

“I never heard of a community-music school before starting with Villa Musica,” said Andre Beller, who has been teaching string instruments there for 10 years. “To not have this available — who would be in those high-school classrooms to help young musicians? What if there were no free music classes at those libraries?

“The community-oriented things we do outside the campus are game-changers.”

Also under the Community Access umbrella is Encore, a group of music programs for seniors. Among them are Lunchtime Recitals, Sing-a-longs, Symphonic Discoveries — a six-week course in partnership with the San Diego Symphony — and Musical Biographies.

Musical Biographies is a six-week workshop that guides small groups in creating memory books inspired by a musical playlist. It’s run in partnership with UCSD’s Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.

“My dad had Parkinson’s, which can come with dementia, and unfortunately it did for my dad,” Chatwin said. “My mum and I had to put him in care in 2019 (in Melbourne). I told her about our musical biographies program. They put together his musical biography with a playlist, personal art and writings.

“That way a caregiver could mention something from his book and my dad would light up. It’s such a special program.”

Chatwin moved to San Diego from her hometown of Melbourne in 2000. She has four college degrees in music, capped off by a doctorate in musical arts from UC San Diego.

That’s where she met her husband, composer/guitarist Jude Weirmeir, shortly after moving here. They married in 2002. After graduating, Weirmeir taught private classical guitar lessons while Chatwin started Villa Musica.

Weirmeir, who is now a full-time teaching artist at Villa Musica, leads the Villa Musica Guitar Ensemble. The ensemble will be performing in the Jacobs Music Center lobby at 3 pm for the symphony’s Day of Music.

In January, Chatwin took a four-month sabbatical from Villa Musica, thanks to Fieldstone Leadership Network San Diego. The executive director’s salary was covered, so that she could afford to take a leave.

Chatwin went to London, where her daughter, Imogen, is a dance student at Trinity Laban Conservatory of Music and Dance. From there, Chatwin traveled to four European countries and then visited her home in Australia.

“It was just incredible,” she exclaimed. “The reason that this program is so important for nonprofits is because not only was I able to get out of the way, but my team was able to step in.

“It’s changed my perspective as a founder. It’s hard to figure out where you and the organization begin and end, because you become so involved. I was able to discover who Fiona Chatwin is without Villa Musica.”

When asked how much he works with Chatwin, teacher Beller responded: “Not very much and I’m infinitely appreciative of that. I tell her that all the time.

“I’m fairly good at teaching and she trusts me to be good at it. If we see each other in the kitchen in the Sorrento Valley campus, we’ll talk. I like Villa Musica as an employer because they handle the business and let me teach.”

For college student Huber, Villa Musica helped him decide to make music a part of his life. Early on, a teacher asked him to assist younger kids learning mariachi at Logan Heights Library. Now a violinist in the University of San Diego’s Mariachi Toreros, his hope is to study engineering, keep training as a runner and continue playing mariachi — what he calls the “perfect trifecta.”

“Miss Fiona’s super energetic and always gave a helping hand,” said Huber. “I want kids to stick with music and explore new paths. Nothing is ever set in stone in music. I could go on about Villa Musica all day.”

San Diego Symphony: ‘A Day Of Music’

When: 11 am to 6 pm Sept. 29

Where: Jacobs Music Center, 1245 Seventh Ave., downtown

Admission: Free

Phone: (619) 235-0804

Online: sandiegosymphony.org

Originally Published: September 8, 2024 at 5:00 am