July on the Mesabi Iron Range is when and where I've been getting my opera-pit fix for the past few years. I play with the Northern Lights Music Festival; the festival is based in Aurora, with performances in several surrounding towns and cities as well.
This year I'm spending July 4-14 playing horn in the Carmen pit orchestra, and I'll be sharing my experiences here on Classical MPR's website.
This first in a series of posts will focus on the festival musicians — singers and instrumentalists who either live in the area or travel here, some returning for summer after summer.
For a local perspective, I talked with trumpeter Chet Johnson and trombonist Jon Dallas, both of Chisholm. "You don't get to play with this caliber of musician too often up here," Chet says.
Jon agrees: "There just isn't a critical mass of classical musicians here."
"From an audience perspective," adds Chet, "you have an opportunity to hear a first-class production without going somewhere like New York. And the tickets aren't that expensive for the quality of the show."
I got the scoop on non-locals from managing director Sharon Falkowski. Two East Coast contingents are from Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey (where artistic director Veda Zuponcic teaches) and Greenwich, Connecticut.
Others hail from too many places to list, but some who have traveled the farthest are tenor Yevgeny Shapovalov from Israel, violin faculty member Igor Petrushevski of the Royal Academy of Music in London — who brought one of his students along — and conductor Gavriel Heine and his violinist wife Eliso Gegeshidze of St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre.
Last night in the lounge of my dorm accommodations I got to know Alexis Barton, an 18-year-old violin player from Indiana. She missed the application deadline for a festival near her hometown, and her search for other festivals eventually led her here. She's played in several musicals before, but this is her first opera.
"The broad spectrum of people here is interesting," Alexis says. "The different accents are cool — Russian, British. So far I've just really enjoyed working with the faculty. The violin faculty have all studied with major people."
As we talked about the beautiful natural setting of our dorm and the area in general, Alexis shared an anecdote that made me smile. "Every morning at 7:00 or so," she said, "there's a little deer hanging out near the dorm that I feed granola bars to. I throw a granola bar to it and it doesn't run away, which the deer in Indiana would. I enjoy these five minutes that I get to myself."
Gwendolyn Hoberg is a classical musician and the owner of the editing and writing business Content & Contour. She lives in Moorhead, plays with the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra, and writes the Little Mouse fitness blog. She is also a co-author of The Walk Across North Dakota.
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