One academy.
Music & technology, taught as one.
We exist to raise people who can build, lead, and serve their communities — with a guitar, with code, or with both.
Music opened a technical door for one of us. It can open thousands more.
Cuerda Academy began with a pattern its founder lived: music was the first discipline, and it led to a technical career. Learning an instrument teaches the same things a good engineer needs — structure, timing, patience, the willingness to practice something badly until you do it well.
Look around Latino Los Angeles and the same need repeats: churches and community organizations that can't find the musicians and the engineers they depend on. Worship teams short of players. Sound booths and livestreams run by whoever is willing, not whoever is trained. A whole generation of kids with talent and no on-ramp — and adults who set their dreams down years ago and never found the way back.
We exist to close that gap: to raise people who can build, lead, and serve — with a guitar, with code, or with both.
A generation of Latinos with the music and technology skills to build, lead, and serve their communities.
We teach music and technology to Latino kids and adults across Los Angeles — bilingually, affordably, and built on the conviction that how we work and how we live are one and the same.
What governs every decision.
Whole-life integrity
No dualism. The way we teach is the way we live — honest work, kept commitments, and genuine care for every person who walks in. We are the same people at the school that we are everywhere else.
Excellence as devotion
We pursue mastery — of an instrument, of code — as a form of doing things well for their own sake. Good enough is not the standard; done with all your heart is.
Bilingual by design
Los Angeles is bilingual; so are we. Spanish and English carry equal weight here. No one is turned away, talked down to, or made to feel behind because of the language they think in.
The bridge
Music and technology are not opposites. They share strings, structure, and timing. We teach both — and we teach the seam between them, because that seam is where opportunity lives.
Affordable on purpose
Cost should never be the reason a kid never takes a music lesson or an adult never learns to build. We price for access and we build to last — because a school that can't sustain itself helps no one.
Why Cuerda.
One Spanish word that means three things at once — which is the entire idea of the school, compressed into six letters.
Instrument, code, and harmony — named by one word that belongs to Spanish first. It is warm, it is ours, and it says what we do without translation.
One string. Many languages.
Cuerda is the education vertical of XENIZ.
XENIZ is the parent — a house of ventures, each one a different way of welcoming people in. The name comes from the Greek xenía (ξενία): the sacred bond of hospitality, the welcome owed to the stranger. Every venture under XENIZ shares one foundation — the same integrity, the same care, the same way of treating people — whether you meet us at a school, a studio, or a worksite.
Cuerda Academy is the first vertical: education. Others will follow. The structure is built to grow.
XENIZ stays quiet & monochrome · color enters only at the venture level.
Built by someone who walked the bridge.
Cuerda Academy was founded by Felipe Vergara — a working technology architect, a worship and technology leader at Iglesia Apostólica Hosanna in Compton, and a father.
His path is the school's thesis in one life: music came first, and it led to a technical career. He has spent years bridging two worlds most people keep separate — Spanish and English, the sound booth and the server room, the church and the workplace.
His daughter studies with YOLA — Youth Orchestra Los Angeles — in Inglewood, proof that this community already believes in serious music education for its kids. Cuerda picks up where that belief points: toward the worship teams, the small businesses, the churches and organizations that need trained musicians and engineers, and toward the next person whose first instrument becomes their first step into a bigger future.
Two schools. Two times of day.
One academy, two paths — Music and Technology — taught to two core audiences, with room to grow into more.
Cuerda Kids — by day
Young beginners, ages 10+. After-school and weekend music and coding — curiosity first, fundamentals always, in a bilingual, faith-friendly space. This is the pipeline: the kid who starts on guitar at 10 and grows into a musician and a builder.
Cuerda Nights — by evening
Working adults who want a new skill or a new career — picking up the guitar they always meant to learn, or breaking into technology. Scheduled around the lives adults actually live.
Future audiences — including newcomers learning English and digital skills — appear in the Roadmap, to be launched as partnerships and funding allow.
Start sustainable. Grow with purpose.
Cuerda is built to sustain itself on tuition from those who can pay — and to extend its reach as partnerships, grants, and sponsors make it possible. The heart is large; the operating model is disciplined.
Summer Music Program
One-month beginner program — Guitar, Bass, Piano. Tuesdays + Thursday group practice. The first paying SKU, proving the model.
Cuerda Kids & Nights, year-round
Ongoing music and technology classes for kids and working adults — the sustainable core of the school.
Church & organization partnerships
Training worship-team musicians and tech volunteers, hosted in partner churches across LA's Latino communities.
Cuerda Puente — the bridge program
English and digital skills for newcomers, so a first job in this country doesn't have to be the last. Launched when grants, sponsors, or partners fund it — never at the expense of the school's stability.