New York music lovers, who live in a city famed for rich and varied cultural offerings, are also well situated to take advantage of the wonderful summer festivals held upstate and in New England. The warm spring weather may remind you that it’s time to make plans for a trip to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, or for concerts at Tanglewood, or to travel to Newport for the Jazz Festival. We recommend a festival a bit farther north, but well worth the trip: the Bar Harbor Music Festival, celebrating its 44th season presenting a diverse musical program that showcases up-and-coming performers. “We consider ourselves ‘a beacon of hope for young artists,’” says Francis Fortier, Artistic Director. “We have helped to advance the work of over 1800 instrumentalists, singers and composers early in their careers.”
The Bar Harbor Music Festival is held in a beautiful setting on the coast of Mount Desert Island, Maine. Bar Harbor was one of the original summer colonies of the Gilded Age, and by the 1880s was the site of mansions that rivaled those in Newport, Rhode Island, and of elegant hotels and cultural entertainment. Leopold Stokowski and Sergei Rachmaninoff are among the luminaries who performed for elite audiences early in the 20th century. The resort colony was going strong in 1947, when a summer of drought culminated in a devastating fire that destroyed 67 palatial mansions, many hotels and homes.
“Fortunately, the main business district and some important buildings were spared, so the cultural life of the area continued to flourish,” says Fortier (above). “The beautiful buildings, like the Bar Harbor Congregational Church and Balance Rock Inn 1903, a magnificent shorefront mansion, provide venues for our programs.” The Festival’s schedule includes recitals, tea concerts, opera, new composers and jazz, as well as a free concert outdoors in Acadia National Park, which will be a string orchestra concert conducted by Fortier, with flute soloist Jessica Hull-Dambaugh. The full schedule of the July 2010 programs can be seen on the festival’s Web site, www.barharbormusicfestival.com, but highlights will include an American-themed brass concert and tea for the July 4th weekend, a performance by noted concert pianist Christopher Johnson on July 9th, and Madame Butterfly on July 16th, featuring Shana Blake Hill and Scott Scully.
In addition to presenting this month-long festival, the organization fulfills its mission of music education with a national touring program, and has just completed 2000 residencies in middle and high schools and colleges, including many New York City and State Universities. Fortier, a violinist as well as a conductor, has taught at universities throughout the region, including a symposium at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on the physics principles underlying the structure of his Stradivarius violin. Education through the arts is vital, and in recent years school budget cuts have had a devastating effect on many music and art programs. “We’ve seen a great impact from our work in high schools,” says Fortier. “The pianist Christopher Johnson started a pilot program offering private lessons in the Pennsylvania public schools, concentrating on schools where 60 percent of the children were at the poverty level. The response was tremendous, and school administrators reported a significant decrease in issues like substance use among students.”
Many parents of school age children may already be headed to Maine for vacation or for summer camp visits, so a trip to Bar Harbor could be a natural extension. The family of Lucia Holzheu, a ten-year-old who has been studying piano for three years, went to the Bar Harbor Music Festival while on a family vacation at Moosehead Lake. “We chose a Strauss concert, as Lucia had been learning one of his pieces,” said her mother. “She was enthralled with the performance at the Bar Harbor Club, and we enjoyed dancing to Strauss waltzes after the concert. I think that Lucia was more impressed, hearing the music in such a unique setting, than she would have been in a traditional concert hall.”
The weekend in Bar Harbor also afforded the family a chance to enjoy outdoor activities, which included biking and hiking in Acadia National Park. Other local attractions for children are the Mount Desert Biological Lab (www.mdibl.org), located in north Bar Harbor, which offers tours and educational programs on marine life, as well as puffin and whale-watching tours. For more information on the Festival, please see www.barharbormusicfestival.com, and for travel information consult www.barharbor.org or call 1-800-288-5103.
