The Peru Gazette

Hill and Hollow Music is privileged to be host for an “off-campus” concert by advanced students of the renowned Meadowmount School of Music on Thursday, July 26 at 7:00 pm at the historic Saranac Methodist Church on Route 3 in Saranac.  The program will offer two substantial chamber music masterpieces featuring the superb vintage Steinway concert-grand piano that resides in the church:  Maurice Ravel’s Trio in A minor (1914) for piano, violin, and cello; and Robert Schumann’s Piano Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 47 (1842) for piano, violin, viola, and cello; plus assorted works of Bach, Ysaӱe, Kreisler. The concert is free and open to the public, but donations may be made to the Meadowmount Scholarship Fund.  For more information please email hillholl@hughes.net or telephone 518-293-7613.  

Founded in 1944 by the legendary Russian violinist and pedagogue Ivan Galamian, the Meadowmount School soon became – and continues today – a pre-eminent summer program for young musicians training for a professional career in music.  Alumni of Meadowmount have won every major competition worldwide, and are among the very best of international soloists and chamber musicians, concertmasters and principal players of the world’s leading orchestras, and the distinguished artist-teachers in every major university and conservatory.  

Among hundreds of distinguished artists who attended the Meadowmount School in their youth are Martin Beaver, Joshua Bell, Glenn Dichterow, James Ehnes, Lynn Harrell, Soovin Kim, Nicholas Kitchen, Jaime Laredo, Yo-Yo Ma, Robert McDuffie, Peter Oundjian, Itzhak Perlman, Arnold Steinhardt, Michael Tree, Pinchas Zuckerman, Paul Zukofsky, and so on.

Illustrious early faculty members included Gregor Piatigorsky, Isaac Stern, Zino Francescotti, Leonard Rose, Josef Gingold.  Two of Galamian’s prized assistants, Sally Thomas and Dorothy DeLay, took on ever greater responsibility to become extraordinary sought-after teachers in their own right.  Current teachers include Elmar Oliveira, Kikuei Ikeda, Ivan Ženatý, Patricia McCarty, Eric Larsen, and many more artist-teachers of highest reputation.

Located in the Adirondacks between Elizabethtown, Lewis, and Westport, Meadowmount offers a bucolic environment with a balance between the enjoyment of nature and the pursuit of high art.  

Individual instruction in the solo repertoire, participation in weekly master classes, guest artist master classes, and involvement in a chamber group coached by both the piano and string faculties provide for a tremendous amount of growth.  Students can accomplish at Meadowmount in a summer what would ordinarily take a year to accomplish at home.