Everybody Sing 'Ah!'
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"It changed who I am … helped me become excited for college
… truly life-changing experience." Without fail, students
in the Oregon Bach Festival's annual summer youth choral
program send letters like these every fall, says Oregon
Bach Festival Executive Director Royce Saltzman. Their
heartfelt notes are different every year, but the message
is always the same: the youth choral program transforms
lives.
Thanks to a private gift, Saltzman will continue getting
letters like these for years to come.
This summer, The Roger and Lilah Stangeland Foundation
donated $700,000 to the program, establishing a permanent
endowment that will help defray the costs of bringing
young musicians to Eugene. In gratitude for their generosity,
festival administrators renamed the program The Stangeland
Family Youth Choral Academy.
Each summer, the academy brings eighty-five of the nation's
best high school singers to Eugene. For ten days, they
live, work, and perform under the baton of Anton Armstrong,
a professor of music at St. Olaf College in Minnesota
and conductor of the prestigious St. Olaf Choir. Recipient
of the 2006 Robert Foster Cherry Award (the single largest
award in the U.S. for excellence in teaching), Armstrong
is known worldwide for his remarkable ability to work
with the very best young singers-and make them better.
"Back home, these students are the leaders," says Armstrong,
"the best singers in their schools. Here, they are surrounded
by others just like themselves. We set the bar high."
But it's not just about stellar performances or star
soloists. "This is more than just making music for simple,
naïve, artistic excellence," says Armstrong. "It's about
producing music and art so that it transforms lives. It
builds bridges. It makes us better human beings." A handful
of youth programs in the U.S. offer this level of vocal
training and performance, but most are all about solo
performances. Few emphasize the ensemble experience, or
community, as the Stangeland Family Youth Choral Academy
does.
"What I think is so distinctive about the Oregon Bach
Festival," says Armstrong, "and the thing I've been drawn
to is, first of all, this is really a family. We expect
them to reach the highest level of excellence they can-not
for selfish reasons, but to become better people and to
share a musical experience that enriches others. They
walk away from these ten days as stronger and better people.
It's not second-class citizenship to be in an ensemble.
I think this is unique, and part of what Maestro [Helmuth]
Rilling [Bach Festival artistic director] has talked about
for years, building community."
For Taryn Curry, a soprano who has always lived on her
family's farm in Madison, Kansas, simply being away from
home was a learning experience. "It was hard the first
couple of days," she recalls. "But I got to know everybody,
and we weren't as different as I thought we were. It was
eye opening."
"People are starting to lose respect for classical music
because it's not something our age group connects with,"
says Curry. "I don't think many people will go through
something like I did at the choral academy. It's the experience
of a lifetime. If anybody ever experiences it like we
did in those ten days, I think they would love it forever."
Getting young people to love classical music is the
point, says Brad Stangeland of Eugene, a board member
of the Oregon Bach Festival. The Stangeland Foundation
was started by Brad's parents, Roger and Lilah, to further
educational opportunities, especially for youths.
"This is one of the core components of the Oregon Bach
Festival," says Stangeland. "We must give kids a chance
to participate and understand this great music, or the
future of orchestral and choral music will be lost."
-Ed Dorsch
