Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
WINONA LAKE - Some of the best classical musicians in the country returned to town this week as the MasterWorks Festival begins its four-week schedule of programming.
All orchestra concerts, opera performances and theater productions are free. Student recitals take place during daily "Village gigs," as Patrick Kavanaugh, MasterWorks conductor, and the staff refer to the informal performances in the Village At Winona¨.
Kavanaugh and his wife, Barbara, and many faculty members have become so enamored of the area, they've moved here and brought the Christian Performing Arts Fellowship organization with them from Virginia.
The MasterWorks Festival is an invitation-only intensive week of study for budding classical musicians. The minimum age of the students is 16. This year several post-graduate students are attending one of the four-week sessions on the Grace College campus.
"We're hitting the ground running," the red-headed Kavanaugh said Tuesday from his office in Westminster Hall. "We have 40 performances and more soloists than ever before."
World-class soloists like guitarist Christopher Parkening; violinists Judith Ingolfsohn, Roger Frisch and Stephen Clapp; oboist Linda Strommen; flutist Paula Robison; clarinetist Brian Hysong; pianists Christopher Harding and Hugh Sung; and trumpet-player Phil Collins are featured in the next four weekends in Rodeheaver Auditorium.
"The audiences are so nice here. In New York they're so critical, if you miss one note they say the whole concert was a bust," Kavanaugh said.
"We're praying this year's patriotic concert (July 3 at 7:30 p.m. outdoors on the Assembly grounds) has no tornado. That'll be a lot of fun."
Last year, winds generated by a tornado tore through town prior to the July 4 concert and fireworks.
He said the orchestra has grown considerably, with 110 players, including a sea of violins, a condition that allows the bass section to play out without burying the strings.
Moving the program to Winona Lake has drawn a lot more midwestern musicians, with many coming from Indiana Ohio and Michigan. But attendees are a national and international mix of performers, with students from Japan, Korea, Germany, Italy, Lithuania and Scotland, Kavanaugh said.
There is a limit of 200 students, with 185 attending this week. An 88-member faculty list means there is one instructor for every two students. That translates into a lot of one-on-one instruction.
"We raise the bar a little bit each year. We turned away 185 students too, many who attended last year. You can tell if they don't practice, if they haven't improved over the last year.
"I feel strongly, before the Lord, we have to set a standard of excellence. Some church musical programs get away with murder."
Because of the expanded orchestra, the stage in Rodeheaver Auditorium has been expanded. That has taken away seating. To avoid turning anyone, away the auditorium's balcony now has another stairway and seating for 100.
"These kids are so ridiculously good. The older students are more serious. Every year we do harder and harder pieces, works professional orchestras don't try. We're working their fingers off this summer."
Kavanaugh said 40 students were competing for three open violin seats in the orchestra.
"You feel terrible because they're all so good and have to narrow it down to 10 super players. Then you have to choose based on how they played a particular passage."
The regular and guest faculty is top-notch, too.
"If you'd have told me 10 years ago I'd be turning down soloists who asked to come here, I wouldn't have believed you."
The Kavanaughs purchased an 1888 farmhouse close to North Manchester. And, since they can't do anything the easy way, they are renovating the new old house.
They are trying to adjust to the quiet after years of hearing pounding traffic on the highways of Virginia.
"We just think it's so cool, living here."
Kavanaugh will join the Grace College music department next year and will become chairman of the music department in 2005-06.
The MasterWorks performance schedule is on the Internet:
