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VOL.29, NO.10
‘Camp’ pumps up music lovers
Newbies and regulars Wilton Baker, of Bethesda, Md., learned about the Peabody camp while on a tour bus in Istanbul. “I told another traveler that I had taken up piano when I retired, and she said ‘you’d love this!’ I’ve been coming ever since,” he said. A former lawyer who represented the IRS before the U.S. Tax Court, Baker was “looking for something completely different” once he retired. Unlike many of the Peabody regulars, he was a complete newcomer to the piano. Now 71, he’s taken weekly lessons for about four years now, and “it’s one of the most interesting things I do.” How’s it going? “I progress as everybody does,” he said dryly. “Slowly.” He added that YouTube “is humbling. You struggle through a piece, and then watch
OCTOBER 2017
I N S I D E …
PHOTO BY STUART ROSENTHAL
By Stuart Rosenthal If you ever took music lessons as a child, you may well recall the traumatic experience of performing for fellow students and their families at annual recitals. You might then consider it a nightmare were you to find yourself attending a weeklong “piano camp,” where you would endure a public critique of your technique before performing on stage at the Peabody School of Music in downtown Baltimore. But for several dozen adults each summer, the Piano at Peabody program is heaven on earth. For a solid week, these men and women live in the Peabody graduate dorms (with or without their spouses), eat in its cafeteria, and attend lectures, private coaching sessions, public master classes and faculty recitals from 8 a.m. till 10 p.m. every day. Those who wish can also secure private lessons with the faculty, play duets with other attendees, and practice to their heart’s content — something some of the attendees cherish as much as any other aspect of the program. The week concludes with two nights of recitals by the attendees, presumably pumped up and well-practiced for their public performances. But it’s not the performing that brings them here. It’s the love of music, and what it does for them.
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LEISURE & TRAVEL Posing on stage at the Peabody School of Music in downtown Baltimore are some of this year’s Piano at Peabody participants. The intensive one-week program for adults inspires beginners and experienced pianists alike, and helps forge long-time friendships among the participants. Front row (l to r): Toni Killinger, Steve Baddour, Teresa Hone, Jim Frison, Connie Baum, Gail Rudenstein, Dolores Vestrich; second row: Sara Leonard, Bill Baum, Laurie Barber, Debbie Koenig, Andrew Chapman, Stan McLeroy.
this 5-year-old play it much better than you can. But then you realize she’s probably practiced it more than you have, too!” Delores Vestrich, of Falls Church, Va., is a multi-decade veteran of the program. The self-deprecating 89-year-old jokes about how she started making music “banging on rocks with sticks.” The former scientist says she loves to “analyze” music, and also finds it “fun to experiment and learn how to make [various instruments] work.” It may be her modesty, but she also says forthrightly, “I play a lot of instruments badly.” In addition to piano, she mentions saxophone, marimba and flute. “No one wants to hear me, and I don’t care,” Vestrich said. “I don’t play for others; just for myself.”
She loves coming to Peabody because the instructors who lecture and conduct master classes “respect our curiosity and love” for music. She also revels in the recitals the instructors give. “You hear better music here than on any other stage; repertoire you won’t hear performed anywhere else,” Vestrich said.
Began at a real camp What is now known as Piano at Peabody actually started out about 25 years ago as a summer music camp in Maine called Encore Coda. Diane Moskowitz of Timonium, Md., who attended it for several years, remembers the camp fondly. See PIANO CAMP, page 42
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