Brevard’s ‘music in the mountains’ festival runs through Aug. 6

The flagship Brevard Music Center Orchestra, one of six orchestral ensembles, includes a mix of faculty and college students. The program at one of its summer concerts included Bartók’s demanding Concerto for Orchestra as well as two lesser known works: Gabriella Lena Frank’s “Three Latin American Dances” and Manuel de Falla’s “Nights in the Gardens of Spain.”

“I feel this amazing energy in the back of my head. They are so serious,” Charles Mutter, the orchestra’s concertmaster and the associate leader of the U.K.’s BBC Concert Orchestra, said of the student musicians.

Credit: Denman Bennett

Credit: Denman Bennett

Each of the symphonic concerts features a large orchestra and benefits from the surprisingly good acoustics of the Whittington-Pfohl Auditorium, an open-sided, 1,800-seat hall nestled in nature. During the pauses in the evening concerts, a chorus of crickets makes itself heard. Fireflies are abundant, along with songbirds, geese and, later, bullfrogs.

My favorite experience during five days here was a faculty concert in the new, gorgeous Parker Concert Hall, which seats 400 and is acoustically superb.

At one concert, Juliet White-Smith on viola and Deloise Lima on piano performed a lovely work by Ulysses Kay, an African American composer who died in 1995. In a discussion, White-Smith said she’d discovered one of Kay’s viola works in a library and tracked him down, ultimately championing and performing that one, as well as this work.

Another excellent pianist, Yu-Lien The, played a set of pieces by three women composers. She then returned with saxophonist Henning Schröder to perform a wonderfully original piece, Hot-Sonate for Alto Saxophone and Piano, written by German composer Erwin Schulhoff in 1930 before he was killed by the Nazis.

Credit: Courtesy of Brevard Music Center

Credit: Courtesy of Brevard Music Center

The opera program included a fully staged production of “La Traviata” at the Porter Center, a splendid 550-seat theater across town on the Brevard College campus. The hall’s size and acoustics are ideally suited to young voices. The smallish orchestra — 21 musicians, comprised of faculty and students from the college program — gave the evening a chamber intimacy.

Opera program students — college and graduate voice students as well as recent graduates — sang all roles and served as the chorus. Dean Anthony, who heads the Brevard institute’s opera program, was the stage director. His production featured a simple, very traditional unit set with movable curved walls and elegant period costumes.

I spoke with a number of the students in Brevard for the summer, including two from the Atlanta area.

Caiden Follmer, a French horn player, will be a senior at Hillgrove High School in Cobb County. “My dream is to play in an orchestra,” he said. “I love my Mahler and my Beethoven.”

Credit: Allison Michael Orenstein

Credit: Allison Michael Orenstein

His experience at the summer institute has been a positive one, he said.

“The seriousness and the competitiveness is very motivating. Everyone wants to be good,” said Follmer, who has been accepted into the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra. “It makes you strive for more. But it’s also really friendly. I like that a lot.”

Hazel Patty, a bassist who will be a junior at Decatur High School, said she doesn’t plan on a career in music but always wants music to be a part of her life. Patty played with the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra for the past two years and next will join the Emory Youth Symphony Orchestra.

She said appreciated her time at Brevard. “The music here is awesome. You get to play and practice with your friends. I like the free structure. And I love our conductor,” she said. That conductor, Ken Lam, is also music director of both the Charleston Symphony Orchestra in South Carolina and the Illinois Symphony Orchestra.

Credit: Courtesy of Brevard Music Center

Credit: Courtesy of Brevard Music Center

The summer institute includes about 500 students in its core programs and more than 80 faculty members. In addition to the high school and college orchestra programs, the core programs consist of piano, composition, opera and high school voice. In recent years, other programs have been added: jazz, classical guitar, high school music theater, bluegrass guitar and banjo, bringing the total student population to more than 700.

The summer festival runs through Aug. 6. Tickets to individual performances start at $24.

Pianist Jeremy Denk will perform Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Brevard Sinfonia on July 21. The Brevard Music Center Orchestra will perform Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 on July 22.

Superstar Audra McDonald will present an evening of Broadway classics with full orchestra on July 26. Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Into the Woods” is on tap for July 27 and 29. Students from the opera program will present George Gershwin’s works on Aug. 3.

The season finale on Aug. 6 will feature the Brevard Music Center Orchestra and Chorus performing Verdi’s Requiem.

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James L. Paulk is a longtime classical music writer for such publications as ArtsATL and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He is also a former state senator.

Credit: ArtsATL

Credit: ArtsATL

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