The following article by Hilary M. Nangle, appeared in the November 2001 issue of Strad Magazine. It is reproduced with permission of The Strad.

If you close your eyes and visualise a New England college campus, it’s likely you’ll come close to Bowdoin. The college anchors the south end of Brunswick’s Maine Street, which is lined with small shops and restaurants, many exhibiting a college-town funkiness. Nearby streets have a quiet mix of mostly clapboard Federal, Colonial, Victorian or Cape-style houses. At the heart of the campus, ivy-covered brick buildings surround a grassy, tree-shaded quadrangle.

As you walk through the campus, music emanates from the various halls: piano, violin, cello, perhaps a chamber group rehearsing. Some students stride purposefully, instruments in hand, along the walkways linking college buildings; others sprawl in the quad, relaxed yet in intense discussion, strains of their music-centred conversations drifting on the afternoon breeze.

Each summer more than 250 talented young musicians come here from around the world to take part in the Bowdoin International Music Festival School. They come to learn from and perform with some of the world’s best-known teaching and performing musicians; to concentrate their studies; to prepare for competitions; to measure themselves against their peers; and to soak up the idyllic Maine Coast setting. They are young and focused. They are the musicians who soon will be, or in some cases already are, gaining critical acclaim as they rise on the world’s stage, and they know this is a crucial step in their growth.

‘It’s the best programme of its kind in the world,’ says artistic director Lewis Kaplan. ‘I believe that; I can’t think of a better programme that has it all.’ Kaplan, the festival’s co-founder, is on the faculty at the Juilliard School, the Mannes College of Music and the Summer Academy at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He’s also founder of the Aeolian Chamber Players.

The festival’s roots are in a concert series staged at Bowdoin College by the Aeolians in 1964. The school opened in 1965, under the auspices of the college. Today the festival is independent but still takes place on the campus, and its six-week residency has grown to include the music school, two artists’ concert series and the Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music.

There is no question that the students here are focused on their music and their future. Take 15-year-old violinist Sandra Cameron. A student of Kaplan in Juilliard’s pre-college programme, Cameron has already performed solo with several orchestras in the US and Europe. For the past five summers she’s been enrolled here. ‘This is like my second home,’ she says.

It’s a second home too for violin instructor Itzhak Rashkovsky and his wife, Ani Schnarch. Both are professors at the Royal College of Music in London and have been teaching here for five years. ‘Bowdoin offers a very rare combination,’ Rashkovsky says. ‘On one hand, it’s a very relaxed atmosphere with wonderful scenery, weather and lobster; on the other hand, there’s an incredibly high level of faculty and students.’

The Bowdoin festival draws both its students and its faculty from around the globe. ‘The depth and number of students and the resources here don’t exist anywhere else,’ says Samuel Adler, composer in residence and a member of the Juilliard School faculty. ‘The teaching is better as a whole, here. It’s the international faculty that makes a difference.’

‘Many of my students make their biggest improvements here,’ says viola instructor Roger Myers, a faculty member of the University of Texas at Austin. He finds students come to terms here with what they’ve been taught all year in school, and ‘return at a whole other level of playing’.

A real benefit is the campus setting. If a student needs assistance, help is no more than a five-minute walk away. ‘What’s exciting, teaching-wise, is that we can really get into some intense work. We can work on quite specific things one week, then a student can pop back in to make sure everything is sorting out properly,’ says cello instructor Nicholas Jones, who’s on the faculty of the Royal Northern College of Music and is head of strings at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester, UK.

The school’s intensity allows classes to work seriously on chamber music, to engage big repertoire thoroughly. ‘Very often in a three-week period we’ll get through a full work and get to perform it,’ Myers says. ‘This is a place where you can love music. There are not a lot of other distractions within walking distance.’

Individual lessons and practice are usually scheduled in the morning and chamber coachings and group practices are in the afternoon. There are also masterclasses held throughout the week, which are open to all. The opportunity to sit in on masterclasses is regularly cited by both students and instructors as one of the programme’s biggest benefits. Students are also able to take lessons with teachers other than their primary teacher.

The school presents numerous performance opportunities. There are at least 28 student concerts during the 42 days, and every student performs at least once. In addition there’s the Outreach Program, in which students can perform at local venues ranging from retirement homes to resorts. Students can broaden their perspective by playing in a lot of concerts, says Steven Doane, professor of cello at the Eastman School of Music. ‘They get to see other students, some better, some worse than they are. It’s really important to see where they are and how much harder they have to work.’

Adding to the festival’s diversity is its orchestra, which includes students and faculty. ‘Because we have an orchestra, the range of potential chamber music available is larger: we have winds, harp, guitar and percussion in addition to strings and piano,’ Simmons says. The orchestra concerts also allow festival students and faculty to mix with area music lovers. ‘They’re an opportunity to come together with real people,’ says cello instructor Rosemary Elliott, another Eastman School faculty member.

Then there’s the one-week Gamper Festival, a festival within a festival, which is dedicated to contemporary works. While not all students participate, it’s an excellent opportunity for those that do to work with composers. The composition students, too, benefit from mingling with the musicians.

‘It’s good exposure for them,’ says Samuel Adler, composer in residence and a member of the Juilliard School faculty. ‘They usually think: “Why celebrate Schubert? He’s dead; celebrate me.” Being here is a good lesson for them.’

One group involved in this kind of collaboration is the Doric String Quartet from the UK, which has a new quartet to read by one of this year’s composition students. The quartet members, Dafydd Williams, Alex Redington, John Myerscough and Chris Brown, came to Bowdoin for various reasons, but mostly to have three intense weeks to rehearse together. ‘It’s amazing how much difference practice can make in a week; you can actually see it,’ Redington says. Another reason they chose Bowdoin was to receive coaching from Mark Johnson, cellist of the Vermeer Quartet. ‘We want to go to him as a great musician who knows the repertoire; to get his view and get him to inspire us,’ Myerscough says.

The international student body is one of the festival’s biggest assets, Doane says. ‘Learning styles are different, yet complementary, but educational systems are quite different. It’s an intangible. Someone who is trained in a different way can be stimulating to others.’ Students who work harder often inspire the others. As Elliott says, ‘They get exposed to possibilities.’

Both instructors and students recognise cultural differences. ‘American students have more drive; they go for it with huge energy. The British approach things more modestly, in an understated way,’ Jones says. ‘There’s a lot to be learnt from both schools.’ Williams, of the Doric Quartet, says it was a ‘real eye-opener’ to realise that US musicians are ‘more dedicated, and their technical standards are higher’.

While music is what brought them here, the quartet’s members also plan to do the things that lure thousands of visitors to mid-coast Maine every summer, namely the beach, lobsters and outdoor retailing giant L.L. Bean. As Simmons says, ‘Maine is a beautiful place to spend six weeks in summer. It’s not a deciding factor in why students come here, they come to focus on music entirely, but the beach is a release.’

What happens outside the classroom is important, instructors say. Musicians often lead a solitary life, spending much time practising alone. It can be difficult for them to connect with the outside world. Here, Rashkovsky says, ‘they find others similar to themselves. They can create contacts that often go beyond the festival. They can create opportunities outside.’ The campus offers excellent sports facilities, libraries and, as many students note, really good food. The music school goes beyond this to schedule outings to area attractions.

Adler invited his students to his home on the first night to talk. ‘I couldn’t get rid of them,’ he says, laughing. ‘They were so interested and wanted to spread the gospel.’ Similarly, Jones and violin instructor Wen Zhou Li, a faculty member at the Royal Northern and Chetham’s, invited their students to a seaside cottage for a party and lobster barbecue. ‘This campus is about living as a musician, relaxing over meals, socialising. Here they are encouraged to do so; it’s a family atmosphere,’ Li says. ‘Students grow up a lot here. They grow as human beings by meeting people from all over the world, and they make long-time friends.’

Japanese student Mana Kudo appreciates this. Here, she can play chamber music with faculty and students who hail from the best conservatories and colleges in Europe, Asia and the US. ‘It’s a rare opportunity for getting to know others and their styles and to exchange ideas,’ she says.

Kaplan agrees. ‘This experience will influence the rest of her life,' he says. ‘This is what Bowdoin is all about.’

-Hilary M. Nangle