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By STEVEN JUPITER
“FOREST MUSIC” BY Judith Shatin performed at Silver Lake.
LEICESTER—For the last 15 years, with little local fanfare, Lake Dunmore has been the site of some of the most exciting experiments in contemporary classical music. Every June since 2011, the New Music on the Point (NMOP) festival in Leicester has brought together composers, performers, and students working at the cutting edge of their field for two weeks of workshops and concerts on the scenic grounds of the Point CounterPoint summer music camp on Lake Dunmore.
This year’s festival begins on June 2 and will include composition students from 14 different countries, chosen from among hundreds of applications. These students will spend the two weeks learning new techniques and exploring new ideas under the tutelage of some of the most accomplished composers and performers working today. They will perform the fruits of their studies, with concerts scheduled for every night of the two-week program.
“The program has grown so much,” said Jenny Beck, who purchased the summer music camp for kids in 2008 and initiated NMOP in 2011. “We had quite a few college students when we started. But the volume of applications has made admission so competitive that in recent years it would be very difficult for an undergraduate to be invited.”
Most of the students now are pursuing graduate-level studies in composition. And the faculty over the years has come from some of the most celebrated music programs in the country: the Cleveland Institute of Music, Brandeis University in Massachusetts, the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, and Yale University in Connecticut. They’ve won Grammys and Guggenheim Fellowships, among other honors.
JENNY BECK
“Our faculty is extremely high level,” said Beck.
Even though the setting may be idyllic—the waters of Lake Dunmore practically lap at the compound’s buildings—the participants are there to learn and produce new work.
“The students are tasked with composing pieces for the instruments we have on faculty that year,” said Beck. So, if a given year’s faculty includes tuba, violin, and flute players, then the students will be writing for those instruments, using the techniques they’ve been studying.
This year’s focus is on microtonality, said Beck. In traditional classical music, the musical scale is divided into whole and half steps. For example, the interval between the pitches C and D is a whole step, but the interval between the pitches E and F is a half-step, as is the interval between C and C-sharp or A and A-flat. The classical music we’re most familiar with, say Mozart or Brahms, works within this system.
In some other musical traditions, however, the musical scale uses intervals smaller than a half-step. These “microintervals” give traditional music from India its unique, recognizable sound, for example. So different from what Western ears are used to, microtonal music can have an “exotic” feel.
So, this year’s crop of NMOP students will get to romp in this musical playground and hopefully produce some compelling work. At the very least, they’ll come away from the program with new tools for further exploration.
Most of the festival performances are for NMOP participants only. “We don’t have space at camp for outside audiences,” said Beck, noting the tight quarters of the campus. But NMOP offers several options for the outside community to share in the experience.
STUDENTS ON THE campus of Point CounterPoint, which has hosted the New Music on the Point festival every June since 2011. The idyllic setting on Lake Dunmore is a lovely site for musical innovations.
Locally, there are free concerts at the Salisbury Meetinghouse on June 7, 12, and 14 at 7:30 p.m. Farther afield, there’s a free concert at the Flynn Theater in Burlington on June 6 at 5:30. And at the Bread & Butter Farm in Shelburne on June 8, there’s a free fiddling workshop and concert at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., respectively. More details about these concerts are available on the NMOP website: pointcp.com.
NMOP is also offering a unique dining experience on three evenings during the festival. Called “Adventurous Food and Music,” these evenings bring together small groups of diners (no more than six per meal) and NMOP participants for adventurous menus designed and prepared by former NMOP students who are also excellent chefs. These evenings will be held on June 5, 11, and 13 at 6:30 p.m. on NMOP’s lakefront campus. Tickets can be purchased on EventBrite.
And if you’re lucky, you might just stumble upon an unexpected performance. Last year, for example, hikers around Silver Lake were treated to a performance of “Forest Music” by Judith Shatin.
“It was a piece of ‘guided improvisation,’” said Beck. “The musicians were instructed to play according to the specific characteristics of the leaves of the specific species of trees they were surrounded by.” Beck displayed Shatin’s score, which looked more like a field guide to the trees of New England than like the sheet music one might expect.
“One of my favorite improvisations from last summer happened in the kitchen,” recalled Beck. One of NMOP’s chefs and his assistant attached microphones to various kitchen tools and ran the natural noises of themselves making a salad through a machine that translated them into musical sounds. The effect was magical, she said. And fleeting, alas. It wasn’t recorded.
Alumni of the program often go on to significant careers in music. Some even stay local. One former student, Joshua Glassman, is now the Executive Director of the Otter Creek Music Festival, for example.
“New Music on the Point is far more than just a summer program. It’s a place where creativity meets community, where inspiration turns into action, and where the trajectory of my life and career quietly began. I didn’t realize it at the time, but NMOP was a catalyst for everything that followed,” Glassman told The Reporter in an email.
“There’s a lot of freedom here to create and be inspired,” said Beck, clearly proud of the program she and her staff—most notably Artistic Director Amy Williams—have built.
“And now 15 years in, we’re striving to become closer to our surrounding community.”
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