In addition to first-rate entertainment for concertgoers, Sunday’s chamber music performance at the Kennedy Center’s Family Stage represents the opportunity of a lifetime for the musicians involved. This summer, 55 music students from 27 states have been participating in the National Symphony Orchestra National Trustees’ Summer Music Institute. Throughout this four-week intensive course of study, they have also been performing for the public. This performance is the last in a series of chamber concerts to be presented; followed only by one full orchestral concert before these students return home.
Carole Wysocki, NSO’s director of education, is pleased to speak about the institute, now in its 20th season; and one she proposed to the National Trustees for funding back in 1992.
| Onstage |
| Chamber Music in the Family Theater |
| » Where: The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2700 F St. NW |
| » When: 6 p.m. Sunday |
| » Info: Free; 800-444-1324 or 202-467-4600; kennedy-center.org |
“They loved the idea of this project,” she recalled. “It was pitched to them and the [decision] was unanimous among the National Trust Governing Board to do it. It’s been their project ever since.”
Students are chosen by an exacting process that involves recorded auditions and resumes, which are reviewed by the Kennedy Center Alliance for Arts Education or to other arts organizations in their particular regions. The submissions are narrowed down and a final round, including the recorded auditions, is judged by a jury of NSO musicians.
Then the work begins.
“There is no real typical day for the students,” Wysocki continued. “Today for example, there will be 16 private lessons at one and a half hours each. These are given by the NSO and Opera House musicians. A Pilates exercise program follows in the afternoon, then two master programs followed at 6 p.m. by the chamber orchestra performance. There are also group classes for wind and string sections, movement and relaxation classes … and side-by-side rehearsals with the NSO.”
The level of training and performance rises each year and, as Wysocki noted, “This is the real deal [and] the work is amazing.”
Several of the students onstage tonight are graduates or current participants of the NSO Youth Fellowship Program, an orchestral training program for talented young musicians. Also performing are students participating in the Young Artists of Color national training initiative of the Kennedy Center.
Tonight’s chamber program includes Mendelssohn’s String Quartet, Op.13, Dvorak’s String Quartet, Op.77, and Ravel’s “Le Tombeau de Couperin.”
“The orchestra is very committed to this project,” Wysocki said. “[Our] musicians are vested as teachers and as chamber music coaches. The program is really a jewel in the crown of the National Symphony’s outreach to the country.”
