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Music brought us together.

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Music Is For Everyone

Our Story

Camp Coletrain began in Buena Vista, Colorado with a belief that learning music could be about more than lessons, practice rooms, and individual achievement. It could be an experience that brought people together.

Founded by Coleman Smith and Robin Vega, Camp Coletrain grew from their shared passion for music, education, and community. Coleman brought a lifetime of experience as a professional musician and educator. Robin brought a background in entrepreneurship, marketing, events, and community development. Together, they created a place where students could learn directly from professional musicians, play alongside others, perform, experiment, and become part of a musical community.

What started as a summer music camp has continued to grow. Camp Coletrain now welcomes students ages 3 and up for immersive learning, collaboration, and performance alongside professional musicians and educators.

In 2026, Camp Coletrain Inc. became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, creating the foundation to take that work even further.

Today, our vision reaches beyond our flagship camp in Buena Vista. Through pop-up camps, festival partnerships, scholarships, community programming, and new outreach initiatives, we’re working to bring meaningful music education to more people and more places, from rural communities in Colorado to communities around the world.

The programs may look different wherever we go, but the idea behind them remains simple: music has the power to change lives and bring people together.

Let The Music Play

Help us create more opportunities for people to make music together.

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Our Mission

Building community through music education.

Camp Coletrain Inc. creates accessible, immersive music education experiences that connect people of all ages with professional musicians, educators, and one another.

Through camps, workshops, scholarships, festival partnerships, and community programming, we create opportunities for people to learn, play, collaborate, perform, and experience the transformative power of making music together.

We believe music education is about more than learning an instrument. It can build confidence, spark creativity, create lasting connections, and give people a place to belong within a musical community.

Our Vision

A world with more people making music together.

We envision a future where geography, age, experience, and financial circumstances don’t determine who gets to experience meaningful music education.

Our goal is to continue expanding a model that can travel. From our flagship camp in the mountains of Colorado to pop-up programs, festival partnerships, and future international initiatives, we want to meet people where they are and create opportunities for music to become a source of creativity, confidence, belonging, and connection.

Wherever Camp Coletrain goes, we want to leave behind something bigger than a music lesson: a stronger musical community.

Meet The Team

We are a small, but mighty team of passionate musicians, artists, educators, entrepreneurs and executives.

Robin Vega, Executive Director

Robin Vega is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Camp Coletrain Inc., where she leads the nonprofit’s growth, partnerships, fundraising, programming, and community outreach. She also serves as Managing Partner of Coletrain Music Academy, overseeing brand strategy, marketing, events, and business development.

A serial entrepreneur and creative strategist with more than 20 years of experience in branding, marketing, events, and startup growth, Robin is also the founder of Brand + Bash, a boutique creative studio specializing in content marketing, design, web development, and special events.

Robin’s entrepreneurial journey began with eHome Marketing, a marketing and print software company acquired in 2013. She later co-founded Clean Republic, a Boulder-based company backed by Boulder Ventures and acquired in 2022. She has also co-founded CAUSE+MEDIC Spa in Buena Vista and The River Gathering, a retreat designed to empower female entrepreneurs.

Today, Robin brings her background in entrepreneurship, creative strategy, events, and community development to Camp Coletrain, helping expand access to meaningful music education and build programs that connect people through music.

Coleman Smith, Artistic Director

Coleman Smith is the musical force behind Camp Coletrain’s educational and artistic vision. A lifelong musician who began studying violin at age three, Coleman holds a degree in Music Performance with a minor in Music Pedagogy and has spent decades teaching, performing, touring, and collaborating with musicians across genres and generations. As Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Camp Coletrain Inc., he develops programming, brings together exceptional musicians and educators, and creates experiences designed to inspire students through collaboration, creativity, and performance.

Coleman is the fiddler for Grammy-nominated Yonder Mountain String Band and an award-winning musician whose career has taken him across the United States and around the world. His passion for music education has led him to teach and share music internationally in Nepal, India, France, and Indonesia, experiences that continue to shape Camp Coletrain’s belief that music can create connection across cultures, languages, and borders.

Whether performing onstage or working alongside students, Coleman is driven by a simple belief: making music with others can truly change someone’s life.

The Board Of Directors

Camp Coletrain is powered by professional musicians, educators, students, community leaders, volunteers, partners, and supporters who believe in the power of music to bring people together.

Corey Johnson

Board Member

Robert Blackford

Board Member

Megan Schmidtlein

Treasurer

Why Music Education?

Because learning music is about so much more than music.

Learning to play an instrument is only part of what happens when someone makes music.

Music asks us to listen. To collaborate. To take risks. To practice something difficult and keep going. To express ourselves. To stand in front of other people and be heard. And, perhaps most importantly, to create something with someone else.

Those experiences can build confidence, creativity, discipline, curiosity, and a sense of belonging that reaches far beyond the stage or classroom.

That’s why Camp Coletrain emphasizes making music with others. We want students to experience what happens when individual learning becomes collaboration, when practice becomes performance, and when a group of people who may have started as strangers becomes a musical community.

We also believe those experiences shouldn’t be reserved for a particular age, income level, location, or type of musician.

Whether someone is picking up an instrument for the first time at age six or sixty, discovering the confidence to perform, learning from a musician they admire, or finding people they finally feel comfortable making music with, music has the ability to become part of someone’s life in ways that last.

That’s why we do this.

Let The Music Play.

Everyone deserves the opportunity to make music, find community, and belong.

MAKE A DONATION