In the News
For Music, Conn Was Cooler Host
By Steven SlosbergPublished on 7/23/2006 The New London Day
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In the 2006 U.S. News & World Report ranking of America's best colleges, Connecticut College and Bennington College in Vermont are both listed among the nation's more selective schools.
However, Conn College is ranked 36th in the country among private liberal arts colleges and Bennington is ranked No. 100.
One tangible in Conn's higher standing, perhaps, at least to an international group that just inhabited the campus for the last two weeks, is air-conditioning.
With little fanfare and, for that matter, conventional publicity, the Amherst Early Music Festival came to campus with a dedicated program of workshops, classes and concerts that began on July 9 and ends today. Some 160 students, of all ages and various homelands, lived on campus the first week, and there were 135 this past week. In addition, several came with their families.
World-class musicians, notably the Flanders Recorder Quartet, playing woodwinds as tall as sequoias and as slender as reeds and attracting a near-sellout last Tuesday night, were on hand, both on the stage and as teachers.
The festival, with origins dating to recorder workshops at Goddard College in Vermont in the early '70s, has led something of a nomadic existence in recent years. There was a five-year residency at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, from 1975 through 1980, and then almost two decades at nearby Amherst College, where the corporate entity the Amherst Early Music Festival was established. Since Amherst, the festival, as it grew or was confronted with summer construction projects, has journeyed from campus to campus. It was at Tufts for a year, then the University of Connecticut for three years, and most recently, Bennington for two.
UConn, says the festival director, Marilyn Boenau of Boston, who plays the baroque bassoon, afforded a country setting that attendees like. It was country, but not really charming, she says of Storrs. We moved to Bennington, which was big on charm, but had no air-conditioning. It was good the first year, but so hot last year. We couldn't take a chance again. We needed air-conditioning.
A fellow involved with early music here suggested Conn College as a suitable place, and one of the Amherst festival's board members had a son who graduated from Conn. That, more or less, is how the festival settled in.
We're very happy here, and what a wonderful concert hall, says Boenau. She was talking about Evans Hall in Cummings Art Center, where all the performances were presented. We would like to stay. We're waiting for the college to let us know about availability of space next year.
The college, which was the annual summer home for the American Dance Festival for 29 years until the dance company departed for North Carolina in 1978, welcomes all manner of symposiums and cultural programs after the school year ends. Making the Amherst Early Music Festival a regular feature on the summer calendar benefits the college, obviously, as well as the community and local music audiences.
This summer, students and faculty from the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Canada and across the United States, including Hawaii, lived on campus. A fully costumed baroque opera, accompanied by an orchestra with 35 musicians, drew a packed house at the end of the first week.
The festival finds Conn most agreeable to its comfort zone. The college, which has dorm and building renovations on its agenda for upcoming summers, seems to want to be accommodating. This is a good fit, like fingers on the holes of Renaissance wind instruments.
Just don't blow it.
This is the opinion of Steven Slosberg.
