From today’s Warsaw (IN) Times-Union:
BY TERESA SMITH, Times-Union Staff Writer
WINONA LAKE – Dr. Patrick Kavanaugh doesn’t get it.
The MasterWorks Festival has made audition requirements more and more difficult and students still clamor to be accepted into the program.
“We had to turn hundreds of students away,” he said about this year’s audition process. “What we have is more college students, more 20-year-olds than ever before. The higher we raise the bar, the more students apply.”
Perhaps it’s the opportunity to receive intense fine arts instruction by a top-notch faculty in a Christian-based atmosphere.
There’s also the resort-like atmosphere of Winona Lake, the Grace College campus and a community that packs Rodeheaver Auditorium literally to the rafters during performances.
This year there are 235 students, 20 from Indiana, from the U.S., Canada, Australia, South Korea, Brazil, Germany, Austria, Norway, Honduras, Lithuania, Ukraine, Malaysia and the Philippines. Nearly half of the students are returning to the MasterWorks Festival program.
This is the ninth year for the festival, which started in New York and relocated to Winona Lake in 2001, moving here permanently in 2003.
The MasterWorks Festival is an outgrowth of the Christian Performing Artists’ Fellowship, which Kavanaugh and his wife, Barbara, a professional cellist, started with two other couples. MasterWorks began in 1997 as a course designed to prepare young people for music careers and to help shape their spirituality by including daily Christian devotions and Bible studies.
This year’s group of talented students includes 65 violinists, 28 pianists, 18 cellists, 12 violas, 34 woodwinds, 14 brass, 14 dancers and 18 actors.
The orchestra, with its sea of violins, will have 127 players.
Kavanaugh admits the orchestra is huge. “All I can say is come early to get a seat in ol’ Rody. We may have to take out seating as we expand the stage.”
The usually articulate director mumbled something about having to build a concert hall because classrooms and practice rooms are spread throughout the Grace College campus and into the Winona Lake United Methodist Church and the Winona Lake Presbyterian Church.
The faculty includes Stephen Clapp, violin, dean of the Juillard School; Hugh Sung, piano, Curtis Institute; Rich Swingle, actor with The Lamb’s Players; Caleb Mitchell, dancer for the Houston Ballet; Lisa Boyko, violist with the Cleveland Orchestra; David Kim, concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra; Charmaine Hunter from the Hartford Ballet School; and Gerald Dolter, Texas Tech director of opera, to name just a few. The faculty, staff and guest artists number 92.
The faculty is staying for an additional week after the students leave. They will perform chamber music concerts July 24-30.
This year’s schedule includes eight orchestra concerts, including the outdoor Patriotic concert, two ballet performances, two opera performances, two theater performances, four faculty recitals, two honors student recitals plus recitals of chamber music, piano, string intensive study,wind intensive study and dozens of “Village gigs” – performances each afternoon in the Village at Winona.
Schedule –
June 29-July 8:
All performances in Rodeheaver Auditorium unless otherwise indicated.
Schedule subject to change.
Sunday, 7:30 p.m., faculty recital.
Wednesday, dance masterclass with Stan Rogers. time and location to be announced.
June 29, 8 pm, student concerto finals.
June 30, 11 a.m., location to be announced, theater seminar with Jimmy Sites and John Kirby; 2 p.m. dance masterclass with Kelly Lannin, locations to be announced; 2 p.m. violin masterclass with David Kim in the Winona Lake Presbyterian Church; and 3:30 p.m. theater masterclass with John Kirby, location to be announced.
June 30, 7:30 p.m., MasterWorks Festival Orchestra concert with Delta David Gier, conducting, featuring David Kim on violin. The program includes Tchaikovsky’s “Capriccio Italienne,” Sibelius’ “Symphony No. 2” and Brahms’ “Violin Concerto.”
July 1, 11 a.m., a piano faculty recital in the Rainbow Room, at Westminster Hall featuring Lori Rhoden and Walter Cosand.
July 1, 7:30 p.m., Pops Concert by the Masterworks Festival Orchestra, at the Hillside Amphitheater, Winona Lake. Patrick Kavanaugh, conductor, soloist – Gerald Dolter, baritone, featuring Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture,” various Sousa marches: Williams’ “Star Wars Suite,” Gould’s “American Salute,” medley from: “The Music Man” a suite of Broadway Songs and the Armed Forces medley.
July 2, 7:30 p.m., faculty recital.
July 3, 3:30 p.m., piano masterclass with Daniel Paul Horn in the Rainbow Room at Westminster Hall.
July 6, 8:30 p.m., theater improvisation night in McClain Hall.
July 7, 2 p.m. cello masterclass with Anne Martindale Williams in the Winona Lake Presbyterian Church.
July 7, ballet performance, 7:30 p.m. with the MasterWorks Festival Orchestra, Anthony Spain, conductor, Rich Swingle, narrator, featuring Britten’s “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” Tchaikovsky’s “Act II from Swan Lake” and Dvorak’s “Nocturne for Strings.”
July 8, 11 a.m. a piano faculty recital with Daniel Paul, horn, and Rosilee Walker in the Rainbow Room, at Westminster Hall; 3:30 p.m. violin masterclass with Stephen Clapp in the Winona Lake Presbyterian Church.
July 8, ballet performance, 2 p.m. with the The MasterWorks Festival Orchestra, Anthony Spain, conductor, Rich Swingle, narrator featuring – Britten’s “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” Tchaikovsky’s “Act II from Swan Lake” and Dvorak’s “Nocturne for Strings.”
July 8, 7:30 p.m., a MasterWorks Festival Orchestra concert with David Bowden, conductor and solo artist Anne Martindale Williams on the cello. The program includes Bach’s “Orchestral Suite No. 3;” Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 1” and Saint-Saen’s “Cello Concerto.”
On the Net: www.masterworksfestival.org