National Music Festival (NMF) performances took place over a two week period at various locations in Floyd, including the Floyd Market Pavilion, Bell Garden and Gallery, the elementary school gymnasium, the high school auditorium, the Presbyterian Church of Floyd and the Jacksonville Center for the Arts. Performances have varied from improvisational playoffs to band marches, from Bach concertos to a Piecaitis CATcerto, written for a piano playing cat named Nora.

At the Floyd Country Store on June 2nd, NMF apprentices and mentors played an assortment of chamber music to a full house.  Audience members were transfixed as apprentices, who auditioned to play earlier in the day, presented performances with intense focused expression. The evening’s program included a cello solo, a double bass solo, a harp duet, song and NMF founder and art director Richard Rosenberg on the theramin, an early electronic musical instrument that’s played without any physical contact for an eerie effect.

Preceding his introduction to a French horn performance, horn mentor Lowell Greer explained to the audience that the playing of French horns originated as hunting calls in the fields of Europe to communicate the status of the hunt. The horn became a rage in France like Super bowl Sunday is in the U.S. today, he said.

Under the community pavilion at the Artisan Market Friday evening, shoppers and artisans gathered to hear a group of young violinists play.  Violinist Zhangyi Chen repeated his original composition that he played at the Country Store the night before, after it was requested by an audience member.  Chen, who is from Singapore, is scheduled to perform his composition at the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra later this year.

At the Floyd Elementary School later that evening, Roberto Palmer, a Spanish apprentice conductor with a lively conducting style, joked that the audience was about to hear something “brand new” before leading the NMF Symphonic Wind Ensemble in a performance of  John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes Forever. March Militaire, written by Richard Strauss and arranged by Richard Rosenberg was part of the program.  Mentor Demondrae Thruman and three apprentices in a tuba-euphonium quartet presented one of the evening’s memorable performances.

A NMF family concert at the Presbyterian Church was geared towards children. Musicians explained the instrument families – horn, woodwind, and stringed – what they are made of and how they are played.  One of the songs performed was a version of Old McDonald Had a Farm with stringed instruments representing different animals.  The string ensemble also played Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldiers Tale as dancer Allie Berger danced the part of the princess. The piece was conducted by mentor Janina O’Brien, who explained that the composition included jazz, tango, waltz and march rhythms.

With a mission of mentoring and providing performance experience to gifted musicians at the beginning of their professional careers, while also providing high-quality performances, education and other music-related activities at reasonable cost to residents and visitors, the festival’s 2012 season is scheduled for June 3 to the16th.   ~ Colleen Redman blogs daily at looseleafnotes.com.

~ The above (a slightly different version) also appeared in The Floyd Press newspaper.