Our Mention in The Villages Daily Sun

Our very own VERY accomplished conductor has been recognized by the Villages Daily Sun recently! Here is the article as follows:

Mizzette Fuenzalida still has her cello she got right before heading to college.
It is part of a passion that’s lasted for about 60 years.
Fuenzalida grew up in Europe and South America and had a musical upbringing. Her mother was a classical pianist and her father was a violinist.
Fuenzalida followed the family tradition and got involved in the musical world, even studying with the organist at the American Cathedral in Paris.

Her family moved to the United States when she was in the ninth grade. Although her mother’s family is from Chautauqua, New York, French and Spanish were spoken all the time in her household. There was just a “smathering” if English.
So, Fuenzalida didn’t speak English very well until her family moved to Connecticut.
”Talk about being the odd person out”, Fuenzalida said. While she didn’t think so at the time, looking back now, “my first day of school was hysterical,” she said.

That same year, Fuenzalida got involved with what turned out to be a lifelong passion: the cello.
Her father said she needed to learn another instrument. Fuenzalida didn’t want to be a violinist like him, because he’d know what she was playing.
So, she gravitated toward the cello.
”You get to sit when you’re doing the Star-Spangled Banner,” she said.

Fuenzalida studied with several professionals, including Nellis DeLay, then the principal cellist of the New York City Opera. She wasn’t just studying cello, though she also studied conducting.
When the time came for college, Fuenzalida got a full scholarship to West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia, for the cello and music education.

That was about the time one of her teachers, the principal cellist with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, said she needed a new cello.
The result was the delivery of a cello built in 1790 in London, the one she still has.

She also met her husband in college. After she finished her bachelor’s degree, he enlisted in the Navy and they went to Charleston, South Carolina.
There, Fuenzalida played with groups including the Charleston Symphony, where she played as the principal cellist, and taught children.
After four years, he husband left the Navy, and they returned to West Virginia so he could finish his degree. That was when she got her Master’s degree.

They later moved to the Washington, D.C. area, where she was named as a conducting colleague of the American Symphony Orchestra League, which is now known as League of American Orchestras. Fuenzalida was one of the only 18 people chosen from across the globe.
She also became the first female conductor at a professional symphony in Virginia.

When she and her husband divorced, Fuenzalida went to Chautauqua for a time before she got a job in Kansas as the orchestra director for elementary and high school students. She started a youth orchestra there, something that apparently became habit forming.

When she moved to Naples, Florida, she and a friend created the Naples Symphony Philharmonic. They raised funds and auditioned people.
”I had a sound I wanted to recreate,” she said. “Those whose sound matched mine I invited to play, and that is a growing enterprise right now.”

When Fuenzaida came to The Villages in 1999, there wasn’t much of a music scene to greet her. She responded by creating the Camerata String Ensemble of Central Florida.
And, after a pause because of the pandemic, the Village of Calumet Grove resident is still performing. She’s involved in three different groups.

”Live music is a very personal experience between the musicians and the audience, and as the audience reacts that pulls the energy into the musicians,” she said. “They rise to the occasion by bringing even more of themselves.”


If you wish to book us for your event, we would be delighted to perform for you! We offer quartets and smaller groups as well.
We do weddings, receptions, office parties, business openings, art galleries and even coffee shops!

Email us at CamerataStringsFL@gmail.com