Interlochen, Year Four

This summer, I am once again up at Interlochen to work as an ensemble librarian! Working at Interlochen has been a great way to spend my summers in grad school, and I'm so excited to spend one more summer here.

There are nineteen ensembles at Interlochen: seven orchestras, six bands (including both concert and jazz bands), and six choirs. There are seven ensemble librarians, and each of us is responsible for two, three, four, five, or even six ensembles. All of the ensembles have very different demands, so having more ensembles isn't necessarily more work.

This summer, I am once again working with the World Youth Symphony Orchestra and the Reading Orchestra. Ensemble groupings change a bit from year to year, so my position isn't exactly the same as last year. Festival Choir now falls to another librarian, but this will be my second summer with both WYSO and Reading Orchestra.

The World Youth Symphony Orchestra (WYSO) is the top high school orchestra. WYSO has new repertoire every week, two and a half hours of rehearsal six days a week, and a concert every Sunday night. This summer, conductors will include Jung-Ho Pak, Carlos Kalmar, Erik Nielsen, John Axelrod, and JoAnn Falletta, and featured soloists will include Joshua Bell, Alessio Bax, and Ani Kavafian. As of now, repertoire will include:

• Brahms: Symphony No. 4
• Debussy: La Mer
• Dvorak: Carnival Overture
• Glinka: Russlan and Ludmilla Overture
• Hanson: Symphony No. 2 "Romantic"
• Humperdinck: Hansel und Gretel Overture
• Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor
• Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances
• Saint-Saens: Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso
• Strauss: Death and Transfiguration
• Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1
• Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5
• Williams: Happy Birthday Variations

Reading Orchestra (RO) is a volunteer orchestra consisting of faculty and staff, although we do invite high school string players to attend to help us fill those sections. RO usually meets three times over the course of the camp, and repertoire is determined at the beginning of the summer once conductors are confirmed. Some conductors want to play a particular piece because they are preparing it for the upcoming season, while other conductors ask us to explore the library's holdings and offer a few suggestions of our own. After conductors are secured and repertoire is determined, RO is pretty low maintenance. As the name suggests, the orchestra will just read through the music once for fun, so it nicely balances out the extremely demanding workload of WYSO.

The first day of rehearsals was yesterday, and camp is now in full swing. Hopefully I'll find some time over the next few days to update again soon!