Chicago, Illinois native, Daniel Santelices, joined the Shreveport Symphony (SSO) as a full-time violinist immediately after receiving his Master of Music degree in Performance and Pedagogy from Northern Illinois University. He soon after was engaged by Centenary Suzuki School’s (CSS) director & founder, Laura Crawford, to become part of their faculty. As a result of this opportunity, Mr. Santelices became conductor of the CSS’s high school chamber orchestra and subsequently was appointed Conductor and Music Director of the Hurley Chamber/Centenary Youth Orchestra in the fall of 2017.

Mr. Santelices’s support of music education began, and continues to this day, within the SSO Community Service contract with his ensemble introducing stringed instruments at Caddo Parish and area schools. It continued with his experience of being sectional coach and becoming a member of the board of the now-defunct Ark-La-Tex Youth Symphony Orchestra. It was through the latter organization in 1998 that he founded and directs the current Centenary Youth Orchestra (summer) Chamber Music Camp. The program provides an initial and ongoing chamber music experience for musicians, as young as five to 18 years and older, who are guided by SSO and Centenary College music professionals. Mr. Santelices has also served as clinician and conductor of Caddo Parish Honor Orchestras, as Master-teacher for the University of Kentucky String Project in Lexington, KY, sectionals coach for the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestras, and as conductor and clinician for various Suzuki institutes and non-Suzuki summer camps across the country. He was formerly Violin Professor at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, LA, and has served as adjunct faculty for Centenary College, Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, TX, and Asbury College in Wilmore, KY. Mr. Santelices was named to Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers in 2003.

While at NIU, Mr. Santelices studied with Vermeer Quartet member, Pierre Menard, and received his Bachelors of Music degree in Performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University as a student of Daniel Heifetz, founder of the Heifetz International Music Institute at Mary Baldwin College. Mar Santelices is a graduate of the Interlochen Arts Academy. His other teachers included Delmar Pettys, Isidor Saslav, Paul Statsky, and Boris Brant.

In addition to his playing duties for the SSO, Mr Santelices performs as a member of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra in Little Rock, is Assistant Concertmaster for the Texarkana Symphony Orchestra, and is a member of the Baroque Artists of Shreveport. He has performed with the Orchestra of Illinois, the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra, the Knoxville Symphony, the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, and the Young Victorian Opera Orchestra. His summer performing opportunities have included the Vermont Mozart Festival and Lakeside Festival Orchestras.

Mr. Santelices will be a featured soloist in Vivaldi’s “Autumn” with the Texarkana Symphony Orchestra in March 2019.