Welcome Back, 2026

16 hours ago
4 min read

Dear Parents,

Welcome back! We hope you’ve had a wonderful summer! Here are a couple of important updates as we begin the new school year:

This is your reminder that every fall, we charge a $150 registration fee per family, which is included in your fall invoice. This fee is used for piano maintenance and tuning, cleaning supplies and safety, hall rentals for recitals, and accompanist fees. The fee also helps cover our administrative and custodial staff, as well as transportation costs for school buses when students perform outside of the local area. The registration fee is nonrefundable.

As we do every year, to keep up with the rising costs of the economy, there will be a $1 per hour increase to tuition this year, which is a 0.89% increase. This is our typical annual increase.

Summer Celebrations

Let’s take a moment to celebrate how the school is thriving and bustling with musical experiences!

Chicago Consort had an INCREDIBLE tour to Croatia and Slovenia! Along with our Artistic Director, Kiyoshi Hayashi, we traveled throughout Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, visiting Ljubljana, Kotor, Split, Dubrovnik, Cavtat, Zadar, and Trebinje!

We performed a joint concert with RTV Slovenia’s Children’s Choir in the Great Hall of the Ljubljana Conservatory of Music and Ballet and played at special landmarks such as the Dubrovnik Public Library within the Old City Walls, the Grand Hall of the University of Zadar, and the Vida Matjan Music School at the Church of the Holy Spirit Concert Hall in Old Town Kotor.

The students even played impromptu music on Dubrovnik’s famous Jesuit Stairs, recognizable as the steps of the Great Sept of Baelor from Game of Thrones!

Most importantly, the Chicago Consort truly created an incredibly special chapter in our school’s history—not only musically, but through kindness, friendship, and the warmth they shared with one another and everyone they met.

Many of our students at both WSSTE and NSS also participated in the Chicago Suzuki Play-Together at Grant Park on June 19th! It is so fun to use the summer to engage our communities in different ways!

We also had many students attend Ithaca Suzuki Institute, Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp, and more! If you have pictures from any of these events, or if your child attended a Suzuki Institute this summer, please forward your photos to admin@wsste.com so that we can include them in an upcoming school newsletter and on the website!

Our Chamber Music Camp celebrated its 10th anniversary this summer! Thanks to our Chamber Camp Directors, Ryan Caparella and Alex Revoal, the students enjoyed a wonderful week of lessons, rehearsals, coachings, and performances.

There were also special masterclasses with guest clinician Jean Hatmaker from the Kontras Quartet, who is also an alumna of WSSTE! Additionally, our wonderful faculty performed a Chamber Faculty Recital, and it was heartwarming to see our brilliant faculty create art and music together in joy and celebration of our beloved camp.

Thank you to everyone who attended the concerts and the camp!

Looking Ahead…

Goodbye, Ms. Maria!

After many years of beautiful music-making and memories with Ms. Maria, she will be closing her chapter with WSSTE/NSS and moving on to a very new and exciting journey! While we are so sad to see her go, we are incredibly excited for her and very happy for her as she begins this next chapter.

Ms. Maria will be starting a business with her husband, Chris—a music school focused on piano studies. We are excited for this new endeavor for them and wish them all the best as they work on their new business plans!

We are also welcoming a few new pianists on board this year! More details about that will be coming soon!

An Exciting Year Ahead!

We have many exciting concerts and events planned for the year. Please check the calendar on the school’s website for the full schedule. Here are a few highlights!

We will return to Hammerschmidt Chapel for our Winter Concert on Friday, November 20th, 2026! We know this is a FRIDAY (as opposed to our normal Sunday concerts), so please mark this date on your calendars!
We are excited to return to the Naperville Community Concert Center for our Spring Group Class Concert on May 8th, 2027! This will be a fun, outdoor, casual spring celebration!
All three of our performance ensembles—Cellissimo, Chicago Consort, and Allegro—will be running a full schedule of events and presenting concerts in the spring!
Chicago Consort will be recording an album this year! We will be recording a Christmas album for the first time since 1999!
The Cello Groups will perform at the DuPage Children’s Museum on October 31st (Halloween morning fun!), and the Violin Groups will perform on November 14th!
We will also continue to organize three solo recitals in both Naperville and Western Springs, giving every child in our program an opportunity to perform, showcase their hard work, and celebrate their progress.

Our school would not be thriving and succeeding as it is without our parents—the true heroes! We hope all of you know how much we love and appreciate our parent community. Your support means the world to us here at WSSTE/NSS.

Thank you for all that you do—your dedication to your child, your dedication to our program, and your support of the larger vision for our whole musical family.

It takes a village to make beautiful things happen, and I am incredibly grateful for the very special community we have here at WSSTE/NSS.

We hope you enjoy the remainder of your summer and are getting excited for fall! We are so looking forward to another exciting year of music-making with you and your children!

Welcome back and here's to another great year!

Sincerely,