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72
winter
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spr ing
Orion Weiss
While Weiss admits he found his first eight weeks in Montecito to be
musically inspiring, what has remained paramount in his life is the people.
“The most important and lasting thing…is the friendships and
connections I made, with teachers, students and Compeers (members of
the Montecito community who ‘adopt’ a student for the summer). Ten
years later, they all remain major parts of my musical and personal life…
Many of the (fellow students) I met at the Academy have played roles in
my career – since we are all following the same career paths and we learned
at the Academy how much we appreciated each other’s playing, it only
make sense that we would seek one another out in the outside world.”
Margaret Halbig
W
hile most of the Fellows at
the Music Academy travel
to Montecito from across the country or
from as far away as Asia, collaborative
pianist
Margaret Halbig
merely had to
make her way across town last June. The
28-year-old Indiana native is in grad school
at UCSB; she followed her teacher,
Robert
Koenig
, when he moved here from the Midwest two years ago.
“I hadn’t had a new perspective on my playing for years,” she says. “I’d
heard so many great things about (MAW’s)
Jonathan Feldman
, and I
really wanted to study with him. One of his strengths is technique, and I
hadn’t focused on that for a while.”
The Music Academy offered the perfect opportunity to get feedback
from new ears and still stick close to home.
“I have a part-time job as pianist and organist at First Congregational
Church of Santa Barbara,” she explains. “I didn’t want to lose it.”
Halbig cites the frenetic pace at the Academy as her most valuable
experience of the summer.
“We learned so much music at a really fast rate. We get the (sheet)
music and a week later we have to perform it. It was great to be able to
pull that off in such a short timeframe. It really prepares you for the real
world, where you get calls at the last minute all the time, and you have
to be able to get ready really fast.”
Unlike the vast majority of her peers, Halbig had taken the summers
off from intensive study the previous few years.
“But I’m so glad I (went to the Academy),” she says. “Instead of taking
a step back, for once I definitely advanced my career.”
T
wenty-seven-year-old pianist
Orion Weiss
attended the Music
Academy for one summer only, in 2000. But since then he’s
become a sought-after soloist and collaborator who has performed as
guest artist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Los
Angeles Philharmonic, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra, as well as at
recital halls across the country, including Lincoln Center.
The 18-year-old Weiss already had connections with the Music
Academy before he arrived at the Miraflores campus the summer before
he was to begin his studies at Juilliard: his teacher in high school,
Paul
Schenly
, was himself a former MAW artist in residence.
“He shuttled me off to the Academy with the utmost urgency to meet
Jerry Lowenthal
, and learn from him,” Weiss recalls, referring to the
veteran pianist from Juilliard who just completed his 40
th
summer at
MAW in 2009.
The teenager bit off a huge chunk of new repertoire over his eight
weeks in Montecito, working on Ravel’s “Gaspard de la nuit,” Bach’s
“A minor English Suite,” Brahms first trio, and Bartok’s contrasts and
second concerto. “It was a fairly virtuoso summer,” he says. “I was young
and ambitious.”
The plethora of opportunities at the summer institute made a large
impression upon Weiss.
“What’s special is the balance between individual attention and
freedom each student enjoys,” he says. “Even beyond the private lessons
and coachings, the Academy offers so many musical options. Students
can really choose how to focus their time, which results in a naturally
customized program. Everybody comes away energized and uplifted –
and desperate to return!”
• M
usic
A
cademy
of
the
W
est
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