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Twin Cities’ Strings & San Diego Clarinet share J.N. Hummel’s music

   I spend about fourteen days each year in and around the Bluefin Family of Resorts in Tofte, MN. During the winter months I get to provide Sunday evening music regularly at the Bluefin Grille along with several of my classical music playing friends.

Woodland Chamber Music Workshop

   Ever since June, 2009, however, the Woodland Chamber Music Workshop invaded Surfside on Lake Superior. Thirty to forty musicians from all over the USA move in for six days of lodging, dining, rehearsing, and performing music, very close to the Tofte shores of the Lake itself. During the years he lived in Duluth, cellist/conductor Josh Aerie chose to replicate some of his own pleasurable moments at music workshops he was able to attend during college. He has lived in South Bend, IN, since the fall of 2013, but he continues to organize and energize this annual retreat.

   So around the third full week of June, musicians arrive, coaches arrive, and the entire Surfside campus is filled with music. This year the Workshop celebrated its tenth anniversary. Twenty-eight musicians came from Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Colorado, California, North Carolina, Illinois, Indiana, Virginia, and Florida.

   Nine different ensembles were created, sampled a variety of music, and chose to work diligently four to five hours each day. Seminar presentations are offered twice a day, and group musical activities are planned to encourage camaraderie within the participants. This year, only four of the musicians were first-timers; these folks like to return to Tofte summer after summer.

Performance Follows Rehearsal

   The coaching staff, expanded to six musicians this past couple of years, offered a concert on Friday night, sharing five pieces of chamber music. Two trios by Gary Shocker and Rick Sowash were written quite recently. A quartet by Franz Schubert and two other trios by Carl Reinecke and Fanny Hensel were from the first half of the 19th century.

   Finally, on Sunday morning a Gala concert is held. All nine ensembles chose a piece from their modest repertoire, and three short pieces were played by the full Woodland Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Josh. Following a lunch reception the musicians take to the road, and by 4:30pm Surfside on Lake Superior has become very quiet. Over the years, the rotating staff across the whole Bluefin Bay complex offers full congeniality to the non-stop energy of these musicians. We always feel welcome, and I think many of the staff like being inundated with all sorts of live music coming from every condominium on the site. 

Public is Most Welcome

   Each year the performances are open to the general public, and the quality of the music is quite high, given the very short, yet intense, practice time available during the week. The allure of music brings musicians together, and the allure of the waves from Lake Superior brings people from all over the world to Tofte, MN. Look up the Woodland Chamber Music Workshop and plan to come listen to music in June, 2018.