The Santa Barbara Strings Program mission is to develop a comprehensive strings program for Santa Barbara County. The full program will be 3-tiered with elementary (SINFONIETTA), junior high ( INTERMEZZO), and high school (ENSEMBLE) orchestras. Santa Barbara Strings will provide a home for a wonderful body of string orchestra repertoire that has been, largely, unexplored by the young string players in our community. The origin of the symphony orchestra is found in the Baroque Sinfonia and Concerto Grosso forms both of which were comprised of varieties of viols, or strings. It is our intent to follow the natural progression of music history from the Renaissance/Baroque Period through the Modern Period with careful attention to matching the repertoire with the technical level of each string group. The high school component of Santa Barbara Strings will fill a void that has existed in strings performance programs on the Central Coast. Amazingly, the large body of string orchestra repertoire has never been taught and performed at the high school level in this geographical area. This repertoire includes: the Bach Brandenburg Concerti, Handel/Geminiani/Corelli Concerti Grossi, Tchaikovsky String Serenade, Dvorak String Serenade, Elgar String Serenade, Vaughn Williams ‘Fantasy on a Theme by Thomas Tallis’. These are all critical pieces for the training of our young string players.