Southwest Chamber Music's mission is to build musical bridges between cultures. As the voice of New Classical Music, we combine the wisdom of tradition with the color of diversity in concerts, recordings, and educational programming which reflects the depth of art music from around the world.
SOUTHWEST CHAMBER MUSIC will celebrate a transformative season in 2009-2010 as international cultural ambassadors for the United States. The U.S. State Department selected our ensemble from a highly competitive field to produce the Ascending Dragon Festival and Cultural Exchange from March to May 2010, the most significant musical cultural exchange between Vietnam and the United States in the history of the two nations. Ascending Dragon will involve six weeks of performances in Hanoi, Saigon and Los Angeles, with performances at the Hanoi Opera House, the Vietnam Academy of Music, the Ho Chi Minh Conservatory of Music in Saigon, the The Colburn School and the Armory Center for the Arts.
In December 2009, Southwest Chamber Music will travel to Mexico, representing our country at the Guadalajara FIL Arts Festival, a festival produced alongside the world’s largest Spanish book fair. Guadalajara invites one host country each year, which this year features arts organizations from Los Angeles representing the United States. Sponsored by the National 
Endowment for the Arts and Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department, Southwest Chamber Music is the only classical music organization of the 16 Los Angeles arts organizations selected. We will reunite with the Tambuco Percussion Ensemble of Mexico city in two concerts of American and Mexican music.
In January and February 2010 the ensemble will collaborate with the Armory Center for the Arts for its 20th anniversary with a series of concerts of music by John Cage performed inside the Amory Gallery retrospective exhibition devoted to Robert Rauschenberg. In summer of 2009, Grammy Award-winning ensemble released a monumental 3-CD set surveying the world of percussion with the Encounters by William Kraft.
Southwest Chamber Music’s ability to energize classical music includes past projects of international cultural significance. In December 2006 the ensemble produced cultural exchange programs with Cambodia’s Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, the 2006World Culture Expo at the temples of Angkor Wat, and the Vietnam National Academy of Music. The 2006 tour
to Southeast Asia featured the music of Grawemeyer Award-winning, Cambodian-American composer Chinary Ung. Southwest Chamber Music also performed in May 2007 at the UNAM Center in Mexico City with a cycle of five concerts of the complete chamber works of Carlos Chávez, joined by the Tambuco Percussion Ensemble.
The ensemble has also been presented by the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., Cooper Union in New York City, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Getty Center, Orange County Performing Arts Center, Ojai Festival, 
and Luckman Fine Arts Center. Guest conductors appearing with the ensemble have included Oliver Knussen, Stephen L. Mosko, and Charles Wuorinen. In March 2003, Southwest Chamber Music became the first American ensemble to perform at the Arnold Schoenberg Center in Vienna, Austria.
As a two-time Grammy Award-winner, Southwest Chamber Music has one of the most impressive recorded discographies of any American chamber ensemble, with the release of recording in 2009. The group has received six GRAMMY® nominations for its four volume cycle of the Complete Chamber Works of Carlos Chávez on Cambria Master Recordings. This recognition from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences includes 2003 and 2004 Grammy Awards in the Best Small Ensemble category for Volumes 1 and 2. Three further nominations for Volume 3 are shared with the Tambuco Percussion Ensemble of Mexico City, including Best Classical Album and Best Small Ensemble nominations in 2005, and a Latin Grammy Best Classical Album nomination in 2006. Finally, Volume 4 was honored with a 2007 Latin Grammy Best Classical Album nomination.
Southwest Chamber Music’s Composer Portrait Series on Cambria Master Recordings received a 2002 ASCAP-Chamber Music America Award for a “landmark set of 12 compact discs featuring American music of our time.” The ensemble has also recorded works of Prokofiev and Poulenc on Cambria, as well as the late works of Krenek for Orfeo Records in Munich. The ensemble’s recordings are available from Cambria Master Recordings, with world-wide distribution by Naxos (Classics Online).
