The Painted Violin Project

The Rushmore Music Festival invites twelve Black Hills Area visual artists for a collaboration that brings together the visual and performing arts for our inspiring “Painted Violin Project: Black Hills Edition.”

The “Painted Violin Project” is a unique fundraising effort to support full-tuition scholarships for talented middle and high school-aged music students nationwide to attend the Rushmore Music Festival, a residential solo and chamber music camp in Rapid City. This project invites visual artists to work with a unique medium, a violin, in a forum that both promotes their work and helps young musicians achieve their artistic goals. This project and the selected collaborative artists will be announced at the Oktoberfest Celebration benefit concert on October 28th in conjunction with our upcoming 10th Anniversary season.

 About Us: The Rushmore Music Festival is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Rapid City, South Dakota. The Festival annually hosts up to 40 students from around the country and up to 10 faculty from around the world for a 6-week intensive summer program. Attracting extremely dedicated, advanced string and piano students, each applicant undergoes a rigorous video audition process and interview to determine eligibility. Upon strictly merit-based acceptance, every student is awarded a full-tuition fellowship to attend the Rushmore Music Festival. This fellowship ensures that all deserving students, regardless of their family’s financial circumstances, have the opportunity to train with world-renowned faculty in a conservatory environment. Our Festival student alumni have been accepted for college at institutions including The Juilliard School, New England Conservatory, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Harvard, Yale, Oberlin, and Cornell.

 As an organization founded and run by musicians entirely on a volunteer basis with zero administrative salaries, the Rushmore Music Festival deeply understands and values the artists’ time and effort that will go into this project. To show our sincerest appreciation for our artists, we will make it our mission to ensure that your work is showcased and recognized by a sophisticated national audience.