Three-week Sarasota Music Festival opens Thursday

Bassoonist Frank Morelli is in demand at classical music festivals all over North America. At the beginning of June, he was performing and teaching at a festival in Maryland. In a few weeks, he’ll head to a festival in Banff, Alberta.

In between, he’ll be here in Florida for the Sarasota Music Festival. He’ll spend time here as a teacher, a performer and, on occasion, as an audience member. From all three vantage points, he says, the Sarasota Music Festival ranks as one of the best.

“Sarasota is by far one of the most important festivals in the world,” he said. “Literally, in the world.”

The Sarasota Music Festival for 2016 gets underway on Thursday and runs through June 25.

Every year, the festival brings together some of the best professional musicians and music teachers in the world, and about 60 of the highest-level student musicians. More than 300 student musicians audition, but fewer than one out of five are accepted.

“It’s kind of misleading to call these people students,” said pianist Jonathan Spivey. “The performance is of such a high level that that you can’t tell the difference between them and the professionals.”

Spivey, the resident pianist for the Sarasota Orchestra, is usually the only member of the Sarasota Music Festival faculty who lives in this area. He’s been a part of the festival every year since 1992.

Live performances

For the public, the Sarasota Music Festival means three weeks full of opportunities to experience live classical music, with an emphasis on chamber music. The performance schedule includes concerts by faculty members, concerts by students, and concerts that feature ensembles made up of faculty and students.

Both Spivey and Morelli say they find the faculty-students concerts — which are scheduled for Friday evenings at the Sarasota Opera House — the most enjoyable performances of the festival. Even though they’re both seasoned professionals, they still learn and draw enthusiasm from working with the students.

“I think that the level of these students is so high, both in their mastery of their instruments and in their knowledge of music, that they pay as well as the older players,” Morelli said. “For students, thinking back to when I was young, it’s an inspiration to play with older players. It’s great to have the chance to play with someone who’s more experienced than you are. And now, I feel that as a teacher of the bassoon at conservatories, I’m always learning things by playing with student musicians.”

One of the most distinctive ways that Sarasota Music Festival audiences can experience live music is by attending the master classes. They’re set in classrooms and studios, some larger than others, but the audience is never more than a few feet away from the musicians.

It’s not unusual in those master classes, Spivey says, for students to deliver a performance that a classical music aficionado would find thrilling. But the teacher will point out an aspect of the piece that had escaped the young musician’s attention. The students play the piece again and it’s much-improved from that thrilling first run-through.

The festival also gives audiences a chance to see and hear the classical music stars of the future. And usually, the very near future.

“We hear all the time about festival students who by the next season have positions in some of the best orchestras in the world,” he said. “It’s so common we don’t even talk about it anymore. It just happens.”

Paradoxically, the reputation of the Sarasota Music Festival may be stronger in other parts of the country than it is here in town.

“I definitely hear Sarasota mentioned in the same sentence as Aspen as Tanglewood,” Spivey said. “It’s definitely one of the best. A lot of the faculty members for the Sarasota festival are the same ones who teach at Aspen and Tanglewood. I don’t think people in Sarasota are aware of that.”

But the classical music lovers who do attend the Sarasota Music Festival make up some of the best audiences in the festival circuit, Morelli said, and that’s another aspect of the festival that makes it exceptional.

“The quality of the students and the faculty, the administration, and the way the community comes out to support the festival,” Morelli said. “In all those ways, Sarasota is one of the top festivals. People in Sarasota should know that they have a bright jewel in their midst.”

This story was originally published June 4, 2016 at 5:17 PM with the headline "Three-week Sarasota Music Festival opens Thursday."