About Maggie
Cellist Margaret Edmondson has had a long and successful career as a teacher, chamber musician and orchestral player.
Maggie has been teaching cello lessons for over 30 years, guiding students from 4 to 70 years old from Twinkle through the major concertos. Maggie’s students have been accepted to competitive performance programs at UCLA, USC, CalArts, Champman University, San Francisco Conservatory, Indiana, Oberlin, University of Michigan, and DePaul. To deepen her teaching knowledge she has spent countless hours observing master teachers, attended the Kronberg Cello Festival in Germany in 2007 and 2013, the International Summer Academy Master Classes in Vienna, the Piatigorsky Master Classes at USC, the Irene Sharp Cello Seminar in New York City and the Piatigorsky International Cello Festival in Los Angeles in 2012 and 2016. She is a member of MTAC, ASTA and the Los Angeles Violoncello Society.
Maggie was a co-founder and founding faculty member of Renaissance Arts Academy, a California Public Charter School in North East Los Angeles, chosen as a California Distinguished School in 2009 and winner of the Los Angeles Music Center Bravo Award for its arts program and CCSA Charter School of the Year Award, both in 2010. Her work there from 2003 to 2011 included creating and nurturing the string program that served 200 young string players each year (including 50 cellists), chairing the Performing Arts Program, teaching cello, advanced theory and conducting, and coaching chamber music. She also conducted the beginning, intermediate and advanced string orchestras and was responsible for programming, arranging and transcribing music for all performances.
Since 2009 she has the pleasure of co-teaching a cello workshop for beginning to advanced students at the Community School of Music and the Arts in Mountain View, California with her teacher and mentor, world-renowned cello pedagogue Irene Sharp.
Since 2009 she has had the pleasure of co-teaching a cello workshop for beginning to advanced students at the Community School of Music and the Arts in Mountain View, California with her teacher and mentor, world-renowned cello pedagogue Irene Sharp. Maggie has been an active and valued member of the classical music world in Los Angeles for many years. She was the resident cellist with Southwest Chamber Music for four seasons. During her tenure she won a Grammy Award for best small ensemble performance, performed at the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, was heard frequently during their 26 weeks of statewide live radio concert broadcasts each season and participated in world premiere performances and recordings of contemporary works by Morton Subotnick, Mel Powell, Charles Wourinen, Stephen Mosko, Wadada Leo Smith, Richard Felciano and Morton Feldman. Maggie has also performed on the chamber series of Camerata Pacifica, the Long Beach Symphony’s Sounds & Spaces, Sierra Summer Festival, San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, and Sundays Live at LACMA as well as working with the Los Angeles Opera, Long Beach Symphony, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Pasadena Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Redlands Symphony, and the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival Orchestra and the Sky Meadow Music Festival in Mammoth.
When not immersed in her musical life she can be found in the garden with her violist husband Dmitri Bovaird.
