During the year’s hottest season, many Peabody musicians find artistic renewal at festivals offered in beautiful locations around the country.
By Linell Smith
Strains of Mozart waft through the countryside as listeners sink into a ritual of lawn chairs, chablis, and the finer sounds of life. In the deepening twilight, the illuminated tent seems to radiate the fervor of the orchestra within. It's the classic music festival still-life: Music lovers sharing a relaxing summer tradition while musicians tackle the challenges that create it.
Peabody alumna Brook Ferguson Schoenwald (GPD ’03), principal flute for the Colorado Symphony, recalls the panic she felt several years ago as she prepared for a chamber music fellowship at Tanglewood. Her touring schedule with the New World Symphony Orchestra required her to miss the first rehearsals for concerts honoring centenarian composer Elliott Carter.
Music lovers flock to concerts beneath the Benedict Music Tent at the Aspen Music Festival. Peabody's Zach Galatis, a DMA flute/piccolo student who completed his first fellowship at Aspen last summer, savored the experience. "Being surrounded by top-notch players is really inspiring," he says. Photo: Alex Irvin.
"When I got to Tanglewood, the other musicians were on edge until they realized I was fully prepared," she says. "Those concerts were transformative for me because the music was really, really complex material that we had to prepare quickly. It brought me into this concentration space, and I really gained a lot of confidence."
That kind of musical muscle building, performers say, is one of the greatest gifts of the summer festival experience. Last summer Schoenwald enjoyed her first residency at the Marlboro Music Festival in southern Vermont, an opportunity the flutist has dreamed of since 2008 when she visited her Peabody teacher, Marina Piccinini.
Meanwhile, Zach Galatis, a DMA flute/piccolo student at Peabody, savored his first fellowship at the Aspen Music Festival, immersing himself in repertoire he will need for his career with an orchestra.
"I feel like I'm having breakthrough moments all the time," he reported from Aspen. "Playing in an orchestra with great musicians reminds me of how much I really want to do this for the rest of my life. Being surrounded by top-notch players is really inspiring: after I hear them play, I just want to go off and practice."
Peabody faculty member violist Victoria Chiang, who has taught at Aspen since 1992, says the sheer abundance of concerts imparts a musical intensity that's both daunting and uplifting.
"It's eye-opening for my students to hear other students from different conservatories and to hear major artists from around the world perform," she says. "Music is listening. It's also interesting to learn from different teachers and artists and apply these ideas to one's own playing. This kind of learning can have a profound impact on one's development."
As twilight deepens, the warm light inside Persons Auditorium at the Marlboro Music Festival in southern Vermont beckons. Peabody alumna Brook Ferguson Schoenwald completed her first residency at Marlboro last summer. "You rehearse all the time," she says.
Each summer, scores of Peabody students, faculty, and alumni follow the music to the artistic havens provided by festivals, seminars, and institutes. These programs offer professional opportunities to work in some of the country's most beautiful locations with some of its most eminent performers. While students and young professionals seek to develop their skills with teachers who can guide their careers, seasoned performers hope for creative renewal and a fresh sense of artistic purpose.
"The whole point of a place like Marlboro is to strip away all the extra stuff that goes into life as a musician and performer to get back to the real weight of what you're supposed to be focusing on," Schoenwald says. "There's not so much of the hype, and a lot more of the music. You rehearse all the time."
That prospect appears more alluring than ever. Although there are no statistics on the industry, roughly 175 summer programs in the United States alone are listed in the annual festival directory compiled by Chamber Music America, the national service organization for the chamber music profession. Competition for spots can be fierce.
— Margaret M. Lioi, CEO, Chamber Music America
Some of the festivals Peabody students and faculty participated in this past summer included the Oundle Festival in Oundle, England; Boston Early Music Festival; Bowdoin Festival in Brunswick, Maine; Valencia Piano Festival in Valencia, Spain; Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vt.; Amherst Early Music Festival in New London, Conn.; Domaine Forget in Quebec; Movimento Internacional de Musica Uberlandia in Brazil; Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro, N.C., and the Great Mountain Music Festival in South Korea.
Margaret M. Lioi, CMA's chief executive officer, says festivals confer many advantages in terms of networking, instruction, and credentials.
"You stand out if you can say you were at Marlboro, Tanglewood, or a number of other festivals," she says. "But that doesn't mean that people who don't go to summer festivals aren't going to have very successful careers. It just means that maybe they have to be a little more creative or entrepreneurial to make sure they meet the people who will help them craft their careers as they move ahead."
She says musicians increasingly use a DIY approach to summer music making. "Starting a festival has been a really great way to be in a place like Montana, playing music with people you want to play music with and creating this artistically nourishing environment that musicians want to be part of."
That's pretty much what happened when pianist Rudolf Serkin started the Marlboro Festival or when David Wells, the late cellist and chair of the chamber music department at the Manhattan School of Music, founded the Yellow Barn chamber music festival as a summer retreat for his students. Yellow Barn, located in Putney, Vt., is now directed by Peabody faculty member Seth Knopp, who has added a program for students ages 13 to 20 to one tailored to young professionals.
The festival's core consists of five weeks of intensive study and performance of repertoire ranging from baroque to new works at various venues in Putney. In addition to Knopp, his wife violinist Violaine Melançon, and fellow Peabody Trio member cellist Natasha Brofsky, the faculty includes Peabody's William Sharp, baritone; Michael Kannen, cello; and Maria Lambros, viola. Working with roughly 40 students each summer, they cultivate an atmosphere where musicians challenge conventions and take risks.
Baritone William Sharp is just one of many Peabody faculty who teach and perform each summer at the Yellow Barn chamber music festival, in Putney, Vt. Photo: Zachary P. Stephens.
"The purpose is for all of us—participants and faculty—to get closer to that feeling of exploring, to pull out from under the yoke of tradition," Knopp says. "When you are rehearsing and performing Beethoven after rehearsing and performing [contemporary Australian composer] Brett Dean, for instance, you can be more open to a fresh approach to it. There's an enthusiasm for the music itself. Rather than thinking, Will they play it well? you think, What will it sound like? What will they do with it? You're open to a kind of fresh discovery and curiosity that comes from realizing that the music is a living art rather than an attempt to sound as close as possible to a Rubinstein recording."
Programs like Yellow Barn provide "very special cocoons," says Lioi. "Music school is your real life—you still have to get good grades and do your laundry—while summer festivals can often offer a lot more equality. Sometimes you're playing in groups with the faculty, sometimes you're eating with them. The experience raises your game. It makes you better than you were when you got there."
The intimate setting of Yellow Barn, located on the grounds of a private school, stands in sharp contrast to the National Orchestral Institute at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Not much artistic give-and-take occurs in the gleaming 1,100-seat concert hall of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, where students learn how to follow the vision of different maestros. One weekend this summer, guest conductor Michael Stern, music director of the Kansas City Symphony, led the young musicians through a final rehearsal of Béla Bartók's Suite from the Miraculous Mandarin. Peabody bass students Vincent Trautwein, Rudy Albach, Dennis Caravakis, and Ed Leaf—half of the entire student bass section—appeared completely immersed in the slightly sinister, rhythmically vigorous music.
"The slow stuff that was a bit iffy is now sounding good," Stern told the orchestra members. "This concert's going to be a fun trip."
Michael Stern, music director of the Kansas City Symphony, guest conducts students at the National Orchestral Institute—a festival that drew four Peabody student bassists last summer to the University of Maryland College Park. Photo: Stan Barouh.
Students at NOI follow a rigorous schedule of rehearsals and master classes as well as attending lectures on such topics as negotiating a contract, union and management disputes, and the administrative structure of orchestras.
They perform public concerts alongside faculty members, many of whom serve as principal chairs of major U.S. symphony orchestras.
"Perhaps most inspirational to me is the faculty's excellence as musicians, not just as instrumentalists," Ed Leaf notes. "They are all so studied and knowledgeable about the repertoire and traditions."
Peabody faculty bassist Paul Johnson was delighted to hear his students perform a concert of Brahms and Stravinsky at NOI. However, his duties at Maryland Bass Works, a Peabody program for young players, caused him to miss a master class taught by Ali Yazdanfar, a former Peabody student who is now principal bassist with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.
"It's definitely a life passage when you realize your former students are teaching your current students," Johnson observes. "They were hearing many of the same things we teach them, but reinforced in a different way."
Peabody trombone student Frances Yu discovered the same thing at the Rodney Mack Philadelphia Big Brass Seminar, a weeklong program held at Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. While she and other members of Peabody's Eastern Edge Brass Quintet worked on a piece by British composer Malcolm Arnold, they also took master classes and coaching sessions from various band members.
"They all talked about utilizing our air, keeping it moving constantly to make a good sound," she says. "Although we're always being told that, it really started to click for all of us. Maybe it was the breathing classes that began the day, or the teachers, or the new environment, but our playing improved noticeably."
Chiang says such summer experiences are often critical to artistic development.
"You can't be in a really intense nine-month academic situation and then go home and be by yourself," she says. "Everyone else is growing and learning in different ways and coming back stronger. In general, the whole festival experience is often as meaningful as college, if not more so."
Yu credits the seminar at Curtis with expanding her musical horizon.
"A lot of kids go into music school focused on getting an orchestral job, but Rodney Mack Big Brass showed us how many different types of ensembles and options there are." She felt particularly inspired listening to the performance of an orchestral piece arranged by a band member.
"When you hear trumpets playing violin parts, it opens your mind to the fact that you don't need to be in an orchestra to perform that kind of music," she says. "It shows what else you can do. But most of all, it just makes you want to play."
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