Music camp Talented amateurs get really serious
They make a living in other professions, now they show their chops in festival’s masterclasses
Eyes closed, he rocks back and forth as his fingers dance all over the piano keys.
His hands effortlessly play across each other; his fingers flutter atop the keys and then, without warning, stomp down, shaking the open lid of the old grand piano in the University of Toronto’s Walter Hall auditorium. He is totally consumed by the music and his virtuosity is bewitching; people shake their heads almost in disbelief as they watch him.
The pianist, Darren Lee, is a 41-year-old self-employed tax accountant, wearing a business shirt and Union Jack socks.
From memory, Lee plays a 15-minute segment of Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff’s “Piano Concerto No. 3,” considered one of the most technically challenging piano concertos ever composed.
But Lee isn’t playing for an audience. He is merely a student in a piano masterclass, an adult amateur musician at music camp.
For the first time, the Toronto Summer Music Festival is holding a weeklong community academy to teach advanced amateur musicians to take their abilities to a new level with world-class mentors. The program runs until Sunday.
This year’s inaugural season attracted 45 covert musicians from across the country, including engineers, doctors, a pediatric neurosurgeon from Sick Kids Hospital and a senior economist with the B.C. Securities Commission.
Music is a huge passion for all the adult students, said the festival’s artistic director, Douglas McNabney, yet many of their colleagues and friends don’t even know they play an instrument, let alone at a near-professional level.
Lee, an accountant in Toronto, practises piano for at least an hour a day, but said unless it comes up in conversation he doesn’t discuss his skill with colleagues or friends. He first started playing when he was 7 and has continued throughout his adult life because it’s an “emotional release.
“It’s just what I do and have always done,” he said. As Lee wrapped up Rach 3 on Wednesday morning, James Anagnoson, one of Canada’s best-known pianists, jumped to his feet, clapping.
“That was fantastic,” Anagnoson said. He noted that leading American virtuoso Earl Wild needed three years to practise Rach 3 with small ensembles before he agreed to play it with major orchestras.
“It’s just phenomenal that you can do that: you play from the head and not the hands,” Anagnoson told Lee.
In Anagnoson’s masterclass, he spends time with each student, listening to them play, advising them on techniques and teaching them how to “train your ear for what to listen to.” His masterclass is one of three programs offered at the music camp; the other two are chamber music with the best woodwind musicians in the city and chamber choir with acclaimed choral conductor Matthias Maute.
The Summer Music Festival has been running for 10 years and McNabney said the adult music camp was his brainchild. It was launched after a survey of audience members at last year’s festival found 65 per cent had studied an instrument at one point in their lives.
“We were looking for an occasion to get them re-engaged,” McNabney said. “These are all advanced amateur artists. We considered calling the program AA, but decided against it,” he said, laughing.
Some of the students took annual leave to attend the academy “and work like dogs practising for a week,” McNabney said.
They arrive at 9 a.m. each day and start with a choir session before launching into hands-on classes with mentors. In the chamber choir program, Maute led a group of singers into their fourth day of tackling a complicated German song.
Three baritones stood side by side: a grey-haired man in a dress shirt, a young man in Converse shoes and Tom Roedding, a 51-year-old elementary school teacher who was wearing flip-flops and shorts.
Roedding signed up for music camp to “energize my adult musical spirit.”
Working with conductors such as Maute “brings out the voice in you,” he said.
Violinist Christine Choi, a 37-yearold emergency physician from Vancouver, said attending the chamber program was a “no-brainer for me.”
Choi has been playing since she was 6, practises at least once a week and gets together for chamber music weekends with friends every now and again.
“It’s great to meet like-minded people and to get to play with a mentor is a real treat; just being able to play with people of that calibre,” she said.
For McNabney, the whole program is about “spiritual sustenance and nothing less.
“These people all live in offices and have wonderful professional careers, but music is such an important part of their upbringing. Everybody is really incredibly passionate,” he said.
“In other circumstances, some of them could have been professional musicians.”
The students will perform a free concert on Sunday at11a.m. at Walter Hall.