How it all began
It all started when Brad Bohn moved his family to Temecula in 2012. Brad was brought here as the head of sales for a local company. He had been in sales since deciding that teaching music was not for him. He received his bachelors in music education from University of Texas San Antonio in 2001. He taught middle school orchestra for one year and decided it was not for him. He decided to provide for his family in other ways. Thus leading to him moving his family from Albuquerque, New Mexico with hopes for the future. After three months in California Brad was laid off and was in a quandary as to how to provide for his family. Brad plays the violin and had taught all six of his kids how to play. When they arrived they found that there were not any school orchestras to speak of. Brad had been approached after playing his violin in church about teaching violin. He started taking on students and started dreaming of the possibilities. It had been his dream to teach youth orchestras. He wondered if anyone had ever created a youth orchestra out of a private lesson studio.
Brad searched the internet trying to find anyone that might have done this. Thankfully he came across Susan Pascale of the LA Children's orchestra. Susan had done this back in 2001 and over the years had grown orchestras to the point of excellence to taking them to the Spring Festival at CARNEGIE HALL in New York City and she had done it 4 times!. Susan was happy to answer Brad's questions and in fact had never been asked how she had done all of this. After three hours of furious note taking Brad was armed with the details and guidelines on how to grow an orchestra from scratch.
Nathan, Dallin and Allison Bohn preparing for TCM's first performance,
The Temecula July 4th Parade
PLEASE COME JOIN US!
In three months Brad grew from 1 student (Lincoln Flowers playing violin dead center with red hair) to 30 students. Here the group can be seen preparing for the July 4th Parade. Have you ever seen a marching orchestra?
The first orchestra, March, 2014.
Within a year Brad had grown the studio into two orchestras taking the top orchestra to a music competition receiving an "Excellent" for their debut competition performance. In 2016 Brad split the top orchestra creating an elite orchestra he called the Chamber Orchestra. This orchestra received the highest score ever received in Music In The Parks history receiving a 97.6.
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
From beginning to CARNEGIE HALL took six years. Brad took both the Youth Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra to Carnegie in 2019 and received a Gold Rating on their performance equivalent to a Superior or a 90%+ score.
In 2020 Brad was preparing for another amazing concert called "Inspire" wen covid hit. Brad immediately broke up all three orchestras (Junior, Youth and Chamber) into sectionals working with all nine violin sections for an hour each (nine hours) every Thursday. Bernard, our cello teacher taught all the cello and bass sections. The time came for the concert and we had to forego a concert. But the kids were so happy to be able to meet weekly with each other through the lonely months of quarantine.
In June 2020 California passed laws to allow groups to meet inside with special regulations. TCM set up it's rehearsal building with all the requirements including masks, hand washing stations and students seated six feet apart from one another. Because of this diligence TCM was able to survive in tact as a performing group putting on an outdoor Christmas Concert. in December 2020 called "A Season of Hope" and a Rock and Roll outdoor concert including electric instruments and sound system at Wilson Creek Winery called "Decades Rewind" which included the music of AC/DC, Van Halen, Queen and so many more rock legends.
This past year we continued the musical tradition with a Celtic Christmas and Musical Masterpieces concert with Brad writing at least half of the pieces performed. Today our orchestras and strings department is not the only amazing thing at TCM Since 2021 we have grown our guitar, piano, ukulele and voice departments to equal the number of string students. We are excited for a new year of fun and performances.