In 1997, David Palmer arrived in Amarillo from New York. A talented pianist and musician fresh out of graduate school, he almost immediately set out to form the organization that became Chamber Music Amarillo. Palmer brought together local musicians—including the renowned Harrington String Quartet and others who also performed with the Amarillo Symphony—to create an arts organization that quickly became central to the city’s culture. Initial concerts took place in residents’ homes until CMA took up permanent residence in the Fibonacci Space on Historic Sixth.
Long a cultural partner and collaborator with Amarillo Symphony, CMA moved out of that space to merge with the Symphony in 2020. Palmer continued to manage its operations—and rapidly expanding opportunities—until announcing he would be stepping down from his position this year, effective June 30. “David Palmer’s contributions to Chamber Music Amarillo and the Amarillo Symphony are immeasurable,” said Larry Lang, the Symphony’s executive director.
Palmer’s personal resume is equally immeasurable. As a soloist and chamber musician, he has performed at prestigious festivals and for audiences across North America, South America and Europe. He has collaborated with musicians from Itzhak Perlman to J.D. Souther. He founded the Quartz Mountain Music Festival in Oklahoma in 2006 and served as its artistic director until 2011, all while continuing to grow Chamber Music Amarillo.
With his time in Amarillo’s arts scene coming to a close, Palmer sat down with Brick & Elm for an exclusive interview inside the Amarillo Symphony offices. This conversation has been edited for space and clarity.
JASON BOYETT: First, David, let’s start at the beginning—at least the beginning of your time in Amarillo. What brought you here in the first place?
DAVID PALMER: At the time, back in 1997, I was married to violinist Annie Chalex Boyle. She was finishing up her master’s degree at the Juilliard School [in New York City]. I had finished the year before at Rice with my master’s and was living with her in New York. We were recently married. She was on tour in Japan [with the Julliard Orchestra] when we got a phone call from Jack Fishman, who was the executive director of the Amarillo Symphony at the time. A position in the Harrington String Quartet was available. Annie changed her flight to fly directly here from Japan. And I flew to Chicago to pick up our car at her parents’ house and drove down.
Wait. I’m trying to imagine two young, talented musicians in the middle of New York, one of the world’s music capitals, getting excited to move to Amarillo, Texas.
We thought this was such a unique opportunity. Making a living in this industry was a challenge. A few months prior, we were in one of her violin lessons with Robert Mann who founded the Juilliard String Quartet. At the beginning of one lesson, he said, “What’s wrong with you kids? You look so morose.” And we said, “We don’t know what we’re going to do.” So he said to us that if we had the opportunity to go to a smaller community, that we really should do that.
Because the beautiful art that we can bring to the community and music would be really cherished by that community.
Amarillo became that smaller community.
But what was particularly telling, I think, is that he [also] said, “You will be amazed at what the community will do for you—how it will transform you.” And I think that that’s really been a remarkable journey, especially for me, because I’ve been here since 1997. We were really both sort of thinking about heading to the West Coast, ultimately. But then the magic started to happen here in this community.
So Annie began performing with the Harrington String Quartet. What did you do?
She was really quite busy. I met a lot of wonderful musicians here in the community early on, and we would play some concerts at WT, which was a lot of fun. [Note: Palmer and Chalex Boyle divorced in 2001.] But it occurred to me about six months after I’d been here, that there was the Harrington String Quartet, and there were chamber concerts that were happening. But in terms of a really organized institution that featured all kinds of genres of chamber music—wind quintet, or brass quintet, or piano trio, or things of that nature—that didn’t really exist at the time. It seemed like a tremendous opportunity because of the fantastic, rich resources of musicians that we have here in the immediate vicinity.
I thought of the idea and talked about it with Jack Fishman and Jim Setapen [then the music director and conductor for the Amarillo Symphony]. They really liked it.
You were trained as a musician. Did you feel equipped to take on an administrative or leadership role?
I grew up a symphony kid, because my dad is an orchestra conductor. And when he was the principal conductor of the Wichita Symphony from 1977 to 1990, I spent my Friday evenings sitting next to the associate conductor in the concert hall during dress rehearsals, looking at the score. Experience with the orchestra was deeply rooted in me. Jim had actually worked with my father and they knew each other well.
The Symphony formed an exploratory committee, and that led to the formation of the Amarillo Chamber Music Society in 1998. What were those early days like?
We did concerts in people’s homes initially. Chamber music, by definition, is meant to be performed in a chamber. So it’s not a [typical] concert space. It’s much more of an intimate, parlour-style location. And so homes were really the perfect location for that. [Performances included] all kinds of different groups. So it would have been wind, occasionally even brass, strings. Frequently piano, if there was a piano in the home. Sometimes we moved in a piano.
Our first year, we did three concerts. We worked off of about a $15,000 budget. I was paid essentially $400 or $500 a concert. Then the second year was five concerts, and it just kept growing. We eventually landed where we were effectively doing something every month.
Eventually you ended up transitioning from homes into a more permanent location with the Fibonacci Space. What year was that?
I think it was 2004. Brian and Joann Pruitt owned the building, our fabulous space on Sixth Street. And they purchased it right about the time that we transitioned out of homes and into what became an identity for us. Not just an idea, but an actual identity.
Was there a distinct difference moving from homes into a cool little venue like that?
There was. We used to rent these plastic chairs [from Rabern Rentals] and we would set them up in people’s homes, because people had to move all their furniture out of their living rooms. I mean, we helped them literally move it. Rabern was getting new chairs and so we thought, “We’ll buy [the old ones] so we don’t have to rent them anymore.” So we bought them, and we set them up at the Fibonacci the first time. We were so happy.
And we got more complaints that night about those chairs than we’d ever heard before. I was like, “Why? Why are they complaining?” It was the same audience and the same chairs.
But they knew they’d be coming back to that space.
Exactly. Their mindset was no longer “this is a temporary thing.” This was the [new] home of Chamber Music Amarillo. And so that led us to getting better chairs. It really transitioned to this very cool bohemian-type space that, interestingly enough, you are beginning to find major institutions like San Francisco Symphony [creating as an alternative concert venue].
It became such an important part of CMA’s identity to the community, and it really opened up the opportunity for all kinds of different age groups to participate and feel like, “Hey, this is something that I can really identify with.” We never lost an audience member because of them becoming bored with the experience.
That connection and intimacy is a critical part of the chamber music experience, right? It feels different from the bigness of a symphony performance.
Well, you just mentioned the key word, which is intimate. You have the opportunity with chamber music to quite literally see it very close. You see the reaction that the musicians are having to what they are playing. It’s not just aural, but also visual. [Palmer pauses, visibly emotional.] Sorry, this is choking me up, but there are things that happen on stage that happen only in a split second and then it’s gone. You don’t know when it’s going to happen. It never happens the same twice. That kind of communication and being able to actually see that as well as hear it—I think it deeply impacts the human soul. It goes deep to the heart.
The experience is not so much about a formal concert experience at a distance, if you will. It really is about friends coming together to share, in a moment, this art form.
CMA established itself during those years in the local arts scene. Along with your performances, the new space led to the Jazz on Sixth concert series, which ran for 15 years, and Polk Street Jazz grew out of Chamber Music Amarillo. When did you start thinking or talking about a potential merger with Amarillo Symphony?
That was in 2019. You get to a point with the organization that you founded [where] you want the community to see it exist forever, right? It’s about the community. It’s not about any single individual. With that in mind, I started talking to [Amarillo Symphony’s then-executive director] Andrew Hay about what it would look like if we were to merge with the Symphony. We met for 12 or 13 months. Our brand was something that they didn’t really have in terms of the performances out in the community beyond education—for example, to have us perform in different locations in the community.
And I was ready for a change. It’s not always comfortable or easy, but it is important. And so when the merge happened in 2020, during COVID, it worked well for both institutions because this community really applauds collaboration. CMA was very successful, and the Symphony was very successful in bringing not only all the musicians effectively into the fold as one, but also all of our donor base and our audience. And then the Symphony muscle started getting involved, and our audience base grew exponentially. I was just blown away with it. It’s always a leap of faith when you do these things.
You and your staff were absorbed into the Symphony, but your board came along, too, right?
That helped make us as stable as possible. The merging committee [created] a CMA committee comprised of former CMA board members. And two of those members of that committee, at all times, are on the Symphony board—full voting rights. So that committee is pivotal to the future success of the organization of CMA as a brand within the Symphony family. There is a real sense of collaboration between me as the artistic director of CMA, and the [Symphony] Music Director, George Jackson, sitting together, and working on ideas of repertoire.
It was, from the outside, an enormous success. But five years later, you’ve decided to move on. Walk me through that decision.
[During the initial discussions], Andrew said, “I need you here for at least five years,” which was just an amazing gift to me. It provided a little bit of stability in anticipation of that change—when people on the outside take their eyes off the founder and put it onto the organization, so that it can really move forward on its own. I think the change is an opportunity for somebody new to come in and do what they do—what is special to them and what will have a meaningful impact on the community, on the audience, and the musicians. I think that’s really, really important.
Are you surprised about your career? You ended up here, in Amarillo, retiring from having built a successful chamber music organization. Could you have imagined this when you were living in New York City?
My piano teacher at Rice [University] once said to me after a particularly tough piano lesson, “You know, David, I really do sincerely believe that people in the arts end up where they should be.” And I think, for me, I ended up where I should have been. I sincerely mean this. I do not think I would have been successful in creating Chamber Music Amarillo in most communities.
Really? You don’t think you could have done this in another city?
It’s because of this community. The community is the linchpin. When I got here and I saw the work that Jim Setapen was doing [with the Amarillo Symphony] and the quality musicianship, strength of interpretation, the reception in terms of connecting to the audience and the audience’s reaction to it—it was remarkable.
It ties back to the early days of struggling to keep cattle alive in a winter storm, [the hard work] to be able to make a living and to grow a community. And from there, you just look. You look at the medical community. You look at social services here, for a town this size. The arts. It’s incredible.
The Panhandle spirit is essentially “We’re going to make this happen because we want it.” And that’s why I think CMA was able to happen here, along with everything else. I’m so grateful for that. I really am.
