Christopher J.
Schwabe was the director of orchestras at Mira Costa High School
from 2002 through 2009 when he retired from the Manhattan Beach
Unified School District.
He spent over forty-six years teaching educational music in the
public schools and began the orchestra program at Mira Costa in
2002 having been coaxed out of retirement after his previous
position as conductor of the Santa Monica High School Symphony
Orchestra.
From its modest
beginnings as a single class of eighteen students in the fall of
2002, the Mira Costa orchestra program flourished under Mr. Schwabe's leadership. In the 2004-2005 school year, the
Symphony Orchestra was formed, featuring members of the school's
Wind Ensemble. By 2009, just under eighty students comprised the
Symphony Orchestra, and the orchestra program consisted of three
groups: the String Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestra, and the
Chamber Ensemble which was made up of the top players in the Symphony
Orchestra. All three groups along with the Manhattan Beach
Middle School Chamber Orchestra made their west coast debut at Disney Hall in
downtown Los Angeles on June 2, 2009.
Mr. Schwabe
received his Bachelor of Music Education degree, concentration in
strings, from Indiana University and a Master of Arts degree in
cello, doublebass, and conducting from Ball State University. He has
the distinction of taking two different high school symphony
orchestras to Carnegie Hall, having conducted the Santa Monica High
School Symphony Orchestra on Easter Sunday, 2002 and the Mira Costa
High School Orchestra on April 11, 2006. Following his highly
successful Disney Hall Concert in June 2009, Mr. Schwabe retired
from teaching at Mira Costa.
The California Music
Educators Association has honored Mr. Schwabe as the Outstanding
Music Educator of the Year. In addition to teaching at Mira Costa
and Santa Monica High Schools and Lincoln Middle School in Santa
Monica, Mr. Schwabe has educated students in Indiana, as well as
Sunnyvale and Paramount, California. Mr. Schwabe also taught at Santa Monica College, the
Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts, and in the School of
Performing Arts Early Development String Program at the University
of Southern California where he received the Outstanding Teacher
Award for extraordinary service to string pedagogy. He has conducted
numerous honor groups throughout Southern California and is in
demand as a clinician at workshops, conferences, and conventions
throughout the state.
Mr. Schwabe has
been a master teacher for numerous music educators and takes great
pride in the number of students who have graduated from his music
programs and become members of professional orchestras as well as
outstanding music educators in public schools, colleges, and
universities throughout the country.
