The Marlboro Music School and Festival is a retreat for advanced classical training and musicianship held for seven weeks each summer in Marlboro, Vermont

Marlboro, Vermont

Marlboro is a town in Windham County, Vermont, United States. The population was 978 at the 2000 census. The town is home to both the Southern Vermont Natural History Museum and Marlboro College, which each summer hosts the Marlboro Music School and Festival....

. Public performances are held each weekend while the school is in session, with the programs chosen only a week or so in advance from the sixty to eighty works being currently rehearsed.

History

The school was founded in 1951 by Rudolf Serkin

Rudolf Serkin

Rudolf Serkin , was a Bohemian-born pianist.-Life and early career:Serkin was born in Eger, Bohemia, Austro-Hungarian Empire to a Russian-Jewish family....

, Adolf Busch

Adolf Busch

Adolf Georg Wilhelm Busch was a German-born violinist and composer.Busch was born in Siegen in Westphalia. He studied at the Cologne Conservatory with Willy Hess and Bram Eldering...

, Marcel Moyse

Marcel Moyse

Marcel Moyse was a famous French flutist. Many works were composed for Moyse including the 1934 Flute Concerto by Jacques Ibert...

, Louis Moyse

Louis Moyse

Louis Moyse was a famous French flute player and composer. He was the son of influential French flutist Marcel Moyse. He was a co-founder of the Vermont Marlboro Music Festival and was a teacher to top flutists all over the world. He died of heart failure at age 94.Louis Moyse was born in...

 and Blanche Moyse on the site of a former dairy farm that had recently become the campus of Marlboro College

Marlboro College

Marlboro College is a small, coeducational, alternative liberal-arts college in Marlboro, Vermont, USA.-History:Marlboro College was founded in 1946 by Walter Hendricks for returning World War II veterans on Potash Hill in Marlboro, Vermont. The school's operation was initially financed using money...

. With a small size and rural environment, Marlboro Music was conceived as a retreat where young musicians could collaborate and learn alongside master artists in an environment removed from the pressures of performance deadlines or recording. Prominent musicians associated with Marlboro have included Pablo Casals

Pablo Casals

Pau Casals i Defilló , known during his professional career as Pablo Casals, was a Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time...

, Siegfried Palm

Siegfried Palm

Siegfried Palm was a German cellist who is known worldwide for his interpretations of contemporary music. Many 20th-century composers like Kagel, Ligeti, Xenakis, Penderecki and Zimmermann wrote music for him....

, James Levine

James Levine

James Lawrence Levine is an American conductor and pianist. He is currently the music director of the Metropolitan Opera and former music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Levine's first performance conducting the Metropolitan Opera was on June 5, 1971, and as of May 2011 he has...

, Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma

Yo-Yo Ma is an American cellist, virtuoso, and orchestral composer. He has received multiple Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts in 2001 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011...

, Joshua Bell

Joshua Bell

Joshua David Bell is an American Grammy Award-winning violinist.-Childhood:Bell was born in Bloomington, Indiana, United States, the son of a psychologist and a therapist. Bell's father is the late Alan P...

, Jonathan Biss

Jonathan Biss

Jonathan Biss is an American classical pianist.Biss represents the third generation in a family of professional musicians, which includes his grandmother Raya Garbousova , as well as his parents, the Israeli-born violinist Miriam Fried and the violist Paul Biss...

, Gilbert Kalish

Gilbert Kalish

Gilbert Kalish is an American pianist.He was born in New York and studied with Leonard Shure, Julius Hereford and Isabelle Vengerova. He was a founding member of the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, a pioneering new music group that flourished during the 1960s and '70s...

, and members of the Guarneri Quartet

Guarneri Quartet

The Guarneri Quartet was an American string quartet founded in 1964 at the Marlboro Music School and Festival. During the quartet's early years the members were in residence at Harpur College in upstate New York....

.

Current Information

The Marlboro Music School and Festival is currently led by Artistic Directors Richard Goode

Richard Goode

Richard Goode is an American classical pianist, especially known for his interpretations of Ludwig van Beethoven and chamber music.Goode was born in East Bronx, New York...

 and Mitsuko Uchida

Mitsuko Uchida

, born 20 December 1948, is a Japanese naturalized British classical pianist.-Career:Born in Atami, a seaside town close to Tokyo, Japan, Uchida moved to Vienna, Austria, with her diplomat parents when she was twelve years old, after her father was named the Japanese ambassador to Austria...

.

During non-summer months, the festival runs the Musicians From Marlboro national touring program, with performances in many U.S. cities each year.