JAVS Summer 2026

was invited a number of times to perform and teach at Esperanza Azteca, a large social/music project in Puebla, Mexico. There he met Javier Medina, a shy 14-year-old, the son of a Mariachi, who showed uncommon promise. Thanks in part to Young’s advocacy, Medina, now 23, has won a full tuition scholarship at Peabody Institute, the music conservatory at Johns Hopkins University. “When I was just a kid, Richard saw my potential,” Medina said. “And he has never stopped fighting for me.” Beginning in 2015, Young spent two years as a visiting professor at the Pontificia Javeriana University in Bogot á , Colombia. Besides leading violin and viola master classes and providing ensemble coaching, he organized and taught two string quartets, one for talented teens, the other for a quartet of ten-year-olds. Even when Young wasn’t there, his influence persisted. In his absence, the older quartet would coach the younger one, applying his teaching methods and philosophy. “This is another way I applied what I’d learned from El Sistema’s Abreu: Every student can ultimately be a teacher,” Young said. “But you can’t just throw them together and expect they’re going to sort things out on their own. Rather, it has to be done with great care and under controlled circumstances.” With both young Colombian string quartets, he insisted that all three upper string players rotate playing first violin, second violin, and viola, pointing out, “For all sorts of pedagogical and social reasons, this proved to be invaluable.”

informal class. She was 16 at the time and her technique needed development. Nevertheless, she showed great potential. Not long after, he invited her to be part of the teen quartet, who proudly named themselves the Botero Quartet, after the famed Colombian painter and sculptor. Since none of them had ever played in a string quartet before, they lacked basic ensemble skills, including a keen awareness of all four parts. So Young provided a number of “etude encores” which built a solid foundation for their later focus on Haydn’s “Sunrise” quartet and Shostakovich’s 8th quartet. They would rehearse on their own each day between Young’s regular visits to Colombia, then receive daily three-hour coaching sessions from him when he was there. And after a few months, he brought them to America where they received concentrated instruction over a two-week period at his home in New York’s Catskill mountains. […] a great learning experience. But it was also a huge challenge because three of us were expected to alternate playing violin and viola. And none of us had ever played the viola! In fact, we couldn’t even read the clef! But this turned out to be much easier than we feared, maybe because of the confidence we got from Richard, who encouraged us to see this as an opportunity, not an obstacle. Though it was unfamiliar at first, this incredible new voice helped us find so many colors and expressive possibilities. And what made it even more cool was that we got to use Richard’s viola. Avila said it was

Nicolle Avila met Young in 2015 at Javeriana University when he heard her play a Mozart violin concerto in an

Figure 4. Richard Young with the Zue Quartet.

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Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 42, Summer 2026 Online Issue