Classical Gas

A professional, masterful concert
violinist as well as professor at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana
University, Mark Kaplan is undoubtedly serious about the business of
classical music. However, during his 1983 appearance at the nascent
Skaneateles Festival, a multi-week, multi-venue chamber music concert
series, Kaplan nearly missed a chance to perform because he was caught
in Skaneateles Lake’s mighty winds while windsurfing for the first time. 

Lindsay Groves had loaned her
windsurfing boat to Kaplan for his adventure. “He got all the way down
the lake, and it got to be closer and closer to the Saturday-night
performance, which was with the chamber orchestra—he was playing
Haydn’s ‘Concerto in C Major for Violin,’” recalls Groves, assistant
principal cellist for the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra since joining in
1972, and part founder of the Skaneateles Festival and its artistic
director from 1980 to 1990. “{Kaplan} had gone off on this thing, and I
warned him that it was kind of windy, but then we’re like ‘Oh, no!’ So
we had to send somebody that volunteered to save him in a motorboat to
get him back and have him play.”

Unlikely high jinks from the classical
music camp, perhaps, but such is the lighthearted appeal of the
Skaneateles Festival to its otherwise very serious performers.
Musicians have a chance to perform at the outdoor field behind Brook
Farm, the festival’s unique venue, as well as to take in the summer
weather during sojourns from the oh-so-busy fall and winter schedules
of the national, professional symphonies from which many of the
festival’s musicians hark. At the same time, classical music fans from
around the area likewise enjoy the chance to take in repertoire not
often covered during an average symphony’s season amid the chirping of
crickets and cool breeze of a midsummer evening.

This year’s festival, a highly refined
version of its low-budget, 1980 inaugural run, continues to show growth
and increasing popularity, as well as welcome the return of many of its
most cherished performers, as it kicks off at the First Presbyterian
Church with free workshops for student musicians of the area. (See
accompanying story for a complete schedule of events.) As has been
tradition since the festival started, concerts will be held for four
weeks, Wednesdays through Saturdays, throughout August

As Groves explains, the impetus that led
to the creation of the festival came from the experience of playing in
her adopted hometown of Skaneateles in 1979 with a string quartet that
forms one of the SSO’s offshoot ensembles. (Groves currently performs
with violist Li Li, and violinists Petia Radneva-Manolova and Christina
Buciu with the String Quartet I, one of three similar groups.) After
entertaining the crowd at the Skaneateles Library that year, a casual
idea came to Groves, who noted the tranquil sublimity of Skaneateles’
natural setting.

“The Skaneateles Symphony Guild had
arranged a tea party after the quartet concert,” Groves says. “My three
colleagues had reasons to get out of there fast and go do their next
thing, but I thought that I’d just stay and chat with the people who
made these cookies. I’m from a small town in Wisconsin, and I said,
‘Gee, this looks like where I’m from.’ I was, at that point, always
going away in the summer to festivals and not playing the symphony’s
summer season, and I said that we should have a festival here, since
it’s such a pretty town.”

At the same time, Beth Boudreau, a
Skaneateles resident and a fan of classical music, had been reaching
out to members of the community in order to find a way to start a
classical music festival. Boudreau had attended Groves’ concert at the
library, and then approached her, which later led to Boudreau
introducing the cellist to Louise Robinson, a fellow resident who was
interested in the same goal. 

The next step came in the form of
Boudreau inviting Groves to meet Louise and David Robinson, owners of a
placid, lakeside home named Brook Farm, built off of West Lake Road in
the early 1900s. Louise Robinson in particular thought that the concept
for a music series had wings, which in turn led to further planning. 

“I talked to my husband and my daughter,
Claire Howard, and we had a lunch meeting,” Louise Robinson explains.
“We decided we’d run with this {idea}. That was in May, and in August
we had an incorporated board and a festival on the way.”

Funding was a problem early on, but that
wasn’t so much of a deal-breaker as it was a hurdle that the three who
had put their hearts into what would soon after become the Skaneateles
Festival would soon overcome. “At first the orchestra members of the
SSO said they would play for nothing because we didn’t have any money,
but we asked a few people up here to sponsor us to the tune of about a
$100 or so, and I think in the end we got about $5,000. Anyway, by the
end of the festival that year we had enough money to pay the musicians
$50. Wasn’t that wonderful? So, they really got us started,” Robinson
says, chuckling.

Shortly after, the number of
participants at the festival began to exceed what the Skaneateles
Library could hold, and so the Robinson family came up with the idea of
inviting fans and musicians into their home to share their music with
Central New Yorkers. While the musicians weren’t paid well, they were
drawn to the festival especially by virtue of the Robinsons’
hospitality, which the family extended to musicians who wished to stay
at their home.

Likewise, Louise Robinson developed a
reputation for incredible cooking, a perk offered to her resident
musicians. “They’d have breakfast kind of on their own here, and I’d
just cook lunch and dinner,” Robinson explains. “I’d go grocery
shopping in the morning to maybe feed 10 or 15 people at lunch, and
maybe 15 to 25 for supper. I just thought that, since I never had a
job—I’m a certified school teacher of music education, but I never
taught school— well, here’s my first job.”

A Little Night Music

Groves explains that for the classical
musicians, the festival offers opportunities to explore deeper, more
eclectic material than they play during their regular symphony seasons.
“It’s kind of like movie actors who want to take on theater
performances in between their movie roles,” Groves says. “They just
need to be there for the audience. With chamber music, people like
playing in smaller halls. It’s more personal than sitting in a big
orchestra with a conductor and playing a concerto with a big orchestra.

“People who are soloists for the
Syracuse Symphony would jump at the chance to have a nice week of
chamber music repertoire instead of a big concerto, and to stay around
the lake with these great people in Skaneateles who would invite them
to be in their houses.”

As a result of its endearing qualities,
the festival has attracted many repeat performers who delight the
audience. Groves will return to the festival as a performer this year,
although she had discontinued her stint as the festival’s first
artistic director in order to return to Wisconsin. Currently, David
Ying and Elinor Freer share the position that Groves once held.

Violin phenom Hilary Hahn has repeatedly
shown off her prowess—although she won’t be back this year—while an
uncountable number of fellow performers have shared the multiple stages
that make up the festival’s venues. Hahn, a preteen violin prodigy
during her earliest appearances at the festival, later struck up a
friendship with David Robinson. A psychiatrist by trade who had retired
during the early years of the festival, he passed away in 2006 from a
bout with cancer.

Recalling Hahn’s relationship with
Robinson, Louise explains: “David Zinman, then the conductor of the
Baltimore Symphony and the Rochester Philharmonic, brought Hilary Hahn
here when she was 12. That was a rare treat. When she was in her
teens—maybe 14—she called David one night, and said, ‘I have 100 tulip
bulbs to plant. How do I do it?’ David, being the gardener he was, was
able to tell her how to plant tulips, and where to put them. They had a
nice friendship. She came and played at his memorial service and that
was such a treat.”

A Jamesville-DeWitt High School grad and
internationally acclaimed classical guitarist, Eliot Fisk is also a
repeat performer. Fisk will grace the stage again this year. He
explains that while the festival is quaint and charming, and that it
offers all of those endearing elements such as a chance to explore new
material, it shows how American perseverance can pay off.

“It’s a great example of American
entrepreneurship in the arts in the best possible way,” Fisk notes.
“People like the Robinsons and their daughters and their extended
family that made the festival possible: The initiative of this one
family is a miraculous thing.”

While Fisk notes the cultural
significance of the festival, he does admit to having partaken in
Robinson’s scrumptious cooking, as well. While that fact is perhaps
less profound in its expression of a humble delight in ineffable
things, that same concept is perhaps the best and most powerful element
of music, regardless of its genre, and one that truly connected
Robinson to the musicians she’s tended to during the festival’s history.

“I remember eating her home-baked bread,
her wonderful, tasty delicious food,” Fisk says. “It’s effortless the
way that Dave and Louise kept the whole thing going. They were under
incredible stress, but you never could tell.” 

Skaneateles Festival Schedule

The 2009 Skaneateles Festival will
feature a range of guest performers, many of whom form a sort of ad-hoc
group known as the Skaneateles Chamber Orchestra. They include Elinor
Freer and David Ying, Renata Artman Knific, Peggy Pearson, Mark Kaplan,
James VanDemark, the Parker Quartet, Conrad Tao, Adam Neiman, Thom
Filicia, the Jupiter Quartet, Jose Franch Ballester, Michi Wiancko,
Eliot Fisk, Linda Chesis and Andres Cardenes. 

Unless special events are noted, an
amalgam of those musicians will perform on the dates below. Concerts
will be held at the First Presbyterian Church, 97 E. Genesee St.,
Skaneateles; Brook Farm, 2870 W. Lake Road, Skaneateles; Skaneateles
High School, 49 Elizabeth St., Skaneateles; Everson Museum of Art, 401
Harrison St.; and Beck Home, 3037 E. Lake Road, Skaneateles.

Ticket prices for events vary from free
to $30, with packages available for full weeks and for the full season.
For tickets or more information, call 685-7418 or visit
www.skanfest.org.

Week 1: Musical Memories

Wednesday, Aug. 12, 11 a.m. Workshop for Music Students. (First Presbyterian).

Thursday, Aug. 13, 8 p.m. (First Presbyterian).

Friday, Aug. 14, 7, 8 p.m. (First Presbyterian).

Saturday, Aug. 15, 7:30 p.m. (Brook Farm).

Week 2: Happy Birthday, Felix

Wednesday, Aug. 19, 7:30 p.m. Villas, Vittles and Fiddles. (Beck Home).

Thursday, Aug. 20, 8 p.m.

    (First Presbyterian).

Friday, Aug. 21, 8 p.m.

    (First Presbyterian).

Saturday, Aug. 22, 7:30 p.m.

    (Skaneateles High School).

Week 3: I Love New York

Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2 p.m.

    (First Presbyterian).

Wednesday, Aug. 26, 11 a.m.

    (First Presbyterian).

Wednesday, Aug. 26, 7 p.m.

    (Everson Museum).

Thursday, Aug. 27, 8 p.m.

    (First Presbyterian). 

Friday, Aug. 28, 7, 8 p.m.

    (First Presbyterian).

Saturday, Aug. 29, 7:30 p.m.

    (Brook Farm).

Week 4: Viva Latina

Wednesday, Sept. 2, 8 p.m.

    (First Presbyterian).

Thursday, Sept. 3, 8 p.m.

    (First Presbyterian).

Friday, Sept. 4, 8 p.m.

    (First Presbyterian).

Saturday, Sept. 5, 7:30 p.m. (Brook Farm).