Santa Fe Talent Education Suzuki Violin 2

Suzuki violin, viola and cello in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Margaret Carpenter and Rick Lohmann, teachers and co-directors

Claire Onuf, cello teacher

About Us

We bring a wealth of experience as performers and violin teachers to our work at Santa Fe Talent Education. We have taught at all levels, from Suzuki beginner through pre-professional.

Teaching is our full-time occupation!

Violinist Margaret Carpenter is thrilled to be in Santa Fe, leading Santa Fe Talent Education with Rick Lohmann. She had been co-founder and director of Omaha Talent Education since 1999. Ms. Carpenter was a member of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra for eleven years. In addition to her work with SFTE, she is co-director of the Santa Fe Suzuki Institute.

A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory, she studied violin with Marilyn McDonald and Stephen Clapp. Ms. Carpenter was a finalist in the Oberlin Concerto Competition and studied for three summers at the Aspen Music Festival.

In 1997 Ms. Carpenter took a leave from her positions in Omaha to work on a Master of Music at DePaul University in Chicago with the first violinist of the Chicago String Quartet, Joseph Genualdi. While in Chicago, Ms. Carpenter was a Civic Orchestra of Chicago Fellow, performed in a master class with Pinchas Zukerman and live on WFMT. At DePaul she studied chamber music with violist Rami Solomonow.

For six summers Ms. Carpenter was on the faculty at the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she performed in the Eastern Philharmonic Orchestra and Eastern Chamber Players, coached chamber music and was chair of the theory department. In Omaha, she was a member of the Adjunct Faculty at Creighton University for four years.

Ms. Carpenter has performed with the Manly Street Chamber Players in North Carolina, Des Moines Metro Opera Orchestra, Cabrillo Festival Orchestra in California and with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra on tour. She was soloist with the Santa Fe Community Orchestra in Prokofiev's Concerto #2 in G Minor in December 2006.

A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Ms. Carpenter started her violin studies at age four with Suzuki teacher Marilyn O’Boyle, graduating from Suzuki Volume 10 at age 13. A teacher since 1987, she has presented master classes at Eastern Music Festival and William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri. She has studied Suzuki pedagogy at the American Suzuki Institute in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, the Colorado Suzuki Institute at Snowmass, the Ottawa Suzuki Institute Mid-Southwest in Kansas and at the MacPhail Center for the Arts in Minneapolis. Her teacher trainers include Marilyn O’Boyle, Doris Preucil, Mark Bjork, Craig Timmerman, Louise Scott, Carol Dallinger and Nancy Lokken. She was the recipient of the Suzuki Association of the Americas’ 2000 D’Addario Scholarship,the 2001 Potter’s Violins Scholarship, a Colorado Suzuki Institute teacher scholarship (2000) and a Suzuki Memorial/American Suzuki Institute grant (2000). She has been on the faculty of the Lincoln Suzuki Institute, the Ottawa Suzuki Institute and the Santa Fe Suzuki Institute. An active member of the Suzuki Association of the Americas, she was the coordinator of the Suzuki Youth Orchestras of America for the 2004 Conference in Minneapolis.

Prior to his arrival in Santa Fe, Rick Lohmann was co-director, with Margaret Carpenter, of Omaha Talent Education, founded in 1999. He teaches at all levels, from 3 year old beginners to preprofessional students. He served as Concertmaster of the Omaha Symphony Orchestra from 1985-2000, and Assistant Concertmaster for five years prior to that. He appeared as soloist with the orchestra on many occasions, most recently in November 1999.

A native of Milwaukee, he received early training at the Wisconsin Conservatory. He was awarded his Bachelor of Music at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and the Master of Music at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Mr. Lohmann did additional graduate work at Penn State University and the University of Miami at Coral Gables. His principal violin teachers include Gerald Stanick, Andor Toth, Sr., and Thomas Moore; his principal chamber music instructors include members of the Fine Arts, Pro Arte, and New Hungarian Quartets.

He has done SAA Suzuki teacher training with Marilyn O’Boyle, Joanne Bath, Pat D’Ercole, Liz Arbus, Susan Baer and Nancy Lokken, and continues his training with Nancy Jackson at the American Suzuki Institute in August 2008. He received the Suzuki Association of the Americas’ Joe Cleveland Memorial Scholarship two years in a row (2000,2001), and is the first person to receive the Suzuki Memorial/American Suzuki Institute grant two years in a row (1999, 2000).

Mr. Lohmann first came to New Mexico in the 1970's as a student at the Taos School of Music, where he did three summers of intensive study with the New Hungarian Quartet. He spent one season as a Resident Artist at the Banff Centre Advanced Studies in Music Winter Program, where he was the recipient of a Leighton scholarship. While at Banff, Mr. Lohmann performed with pianist Anton Kuerti and violist Bruno Pasquier, worked with composer Mauricio Kagel, and studied with Camilla Wicks, Lorand Fenyves and Thomas Brandis, among many others.

Mr. Lohmann has been resident or guest with many music festivals, including the Telluride Chamber Music Festival, Music in the Mountains at Rocky Ridge, the Colorado Music Festival in Boulder, the Des Moines Metro Opera, Peninsula Festival, Spoleto USA, Festival Dei Due Mondi (Spoleto, Italy), and the Colorado Philharmonic. For five years he was the Principal Second Violinist of the Cabrillo Music Festival, where he was featured several times on the chamber music series and recorded with the orchestra. He was most recently a member of the faculty at the the Eastern Music Festival, where he was Assistant Principal Second Violinist with the Eastern Philharmonic Orchestra and a member of the Eastern Chamber Players. Mr. Lohmann was also a member of the Florida Philharmonic and served as Principal Second Violinist with the Madison Symphony Orchestra.

He was an active private teacher in Nebraska for over two decades. While at the Eastern Music Festival, he taught violin, coached chamber music and orchestra sectionals and taught music theory. He was on the faculty of the Rocky Ridge Music Center for three summers, and has taught at Morningside College and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He has presented master classes at Eastern, the University of Nebraska- Lincoln and William Jewell College. He joined the faculty of the Lincoln Suzuki Institute in 2002, and has been on the faculty of the Santa Fe Suzuki Institute since 2003. He is a former Music Director of the Santa Fe Youth Symphony Association and conducts SFYSA's Prelude string orchestra. He has recently been a guest clinician at Suzuki workshops in Houston, Amarillo, and Las Cruces.

Cellist Claire Onuf comes to us from Corpus Christi, TX, where she taught in the public schools (Corpus Christi ISD), teaching elementary through high school, including a Suzuki program for 1st and 2nd grade violin at Chula Vista Academy of Fine Arts, an elementary magnet school; Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, teaching string methods and cello; Texas A&M University Kingsville, teaching string methods and Music History; maintained a private studio for cello students of all ages; and performed with the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra, the Laredo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Kingsville Symphony Orchestra, and the Victoria Symphony Orchestra (which she still performs with at this time).

Mrs. Onuf earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Texas, studying cello with Phyllis Young, and a Master of Music degree from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, studying cello with Paul Tobias. She began teaching Suzuki cello in 1981, just after the birth of her second child. Mrs.Onuf taught Suzuki Cello as part of the after school program at Princeton Day School and at Westminster Conservatory, a division of Westminster Choir College, in Princeton, NJ.

Mrs. Onuf has been teaching cello for more than 30 years. She has moved to Santa Fe with her husband, a retired marine biologist, and they are enjoying the beautiful sunshine, lower humidity levels, great hiking trails, and the wonderfully artistic community.