An island paradise serving as the background for musical studies may seem utopian, but it has become a reality on Nantucket, Massachusetts. Soprano and Nantucket native Greta Feeney and pianist/organist Robert Behrman, long-time collaborators who have been presenting recitals on Nantucket for the past four years, co-founded the Nantucket Island Academy of Music (NIAM) in 2009 and incorporated themselves in 2010. Central to NIAM’s mission is expanding the public’s enthusiasm for their chamber music performances and providing rising musicians with resources that they themselves did not have available.
“I grew up on Nantucket, and consistent high-quality classical music training was lacking,” Feeney says. “It was difficult to prepare for conservatory auditions with the resources available on the island, so I wanted to ensure that NIAM makes a commitment to young people and adults who are interested in serious study—not necessarily to become career musicians, but to become literate musicians and make music at a high level as a hobby or for their whole life.”
With the launch of NIAM, featuring a chamber music festival, musicians on Nantucket and those who visit the island will have more opportunities to perform in concerts and more access to musical education, guided by Feeney as executive director and Behrman as artistic director. Plus, the island community is larger than it was years ago (the winter population is 16,000 while summer population grows to 60,000), so NIAM is partially a response to population growth.
“When I was growing up, the general attitude on Nantucket was that if you were serious about studying music, you had to go to Boston for lessons. It is prohibitively expensive for a lot of parents to make those trips with regularity, considering the commute and overnight stays,” Feeney says. She laments that there have not been many options except for making the commitment to study at the New England Conservatory of Music. Now, however, NIAM helps to prepare students for conservatory auditions and competitive university programs. Some parents have even demonstrated their gratitude for this local education with private funding for NIAM.
Of note, Feeney and Behrman do not seek to create an environment in which singers are competing for career advancement and, therefore, are afraid of failure. Instead, they create an environment in which excellence is achieved through joy—the focus is on the quality of collaborative music-making and what Feeney describes as “lowering the stakes” to create better performances. “NIAM is competitive because the musical product is fresh, spontaneous, youthful, and real,” Feeney says. “It’s all about the music and getting the most authentic performances, and that’s possible only when people are relaxed and supportive. People feel safe taking a musical chance, such as improvising an ornament with the knowledge that, if it doesn’t go perfectly, it’ll still be okay.”
Along with a relaxed atmosphere for music-making, there is also the attraction of Nantucket itself as an idyllic island where singers can spend part of their summer immersing themselves in chamber music and chamber opera. “Nantucket is a beautiful, well preserved, serene environment that gives musicians the space they need to do creative work in an intimate setting. During my conservatory training, we were cooped up in buildings and often competing with each other. At NIAM, we’re envisioning more of an artist colony where people come to collaborate and have time to spend outside,” Behrman says, comparing Nantucket to a European village. “It’s far enough away to achieve the effect of a European study program because you are removed from the stress of your life without having to cross the Atlantic.”
NIAM is an “academy” in the classical sense—professional musicians interested in elevating and maintaining the standards in their field. Specifically, NIAM is a roster of professional musicians with a special connection to Nantucket. Some of them live as well as teach on the island. Feeney is excited about the world-renowned guest artists she and Behrman are inviting to Nantucket to work with rising singers. NIAM participants will also collaborate with Musica Reginae, a Queens, New York-based chamber music performance group; Inter-Atlantic Music Foundation, an organization that establishes connections between European opera impresarios and emerging American artists; and L’académie, a Boston-based Baroque ensemble.
Roman Borgman, a former professional opera singer and president of Inter-Atlantic Music Foundation, has extensive European opera connections, especially at Zurich Opera. He and his wife have visited Nantucket every summer for 20 years, and he has known Feeney since she was in high school. When she told him about NIAM, he was hooked. “This academy is a terrific idea because the island really needs this level of musical education,” Borgman says. “We have to revive Nantucket’s musical tradition because there are a lot of classical music and opera lovers, and I am looking forward to coaching and teaching aspiring singers every summer and helping to present Nantucket Opera Festival each August.”
Then, of course, there are Feeney and Behrman themselves. Feeney, a former Adler Fellow with San Francisco Opera and a semifinalist in the Metropolitan Opera’s 2001 National Council Auditions, has appeared with San Francisco Opera as Marzelline in Fidelio and Gretel in Hänsel und Gretel. In 2011, she advances to candidacy in the doctor of musical arts program at SUNY Stony Brook and begins the summer season with a return to Spoleto Festival USA as Papagena in Die Zauberflöte, returning to Nantucket in August as Mimì in La bohème. She graduated from the Juilliard Opera Center and has been a guest soloist with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and New Century Chamber Ensemble.
Behrman is music director of First Congregational Church on Nantucket, where most of the island’s chamber music performances take place—Bennett Hall, attached to the church and seating 200 people, is the venue for NIAM’s chamber operas. A pianist, organist, choir director, vocal coach, and composer, Behrman’s background is mainly in chamber music, although he has played some of Handel’s organ concertos with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. And, importantly, he considers himself lucky and wants NIAM to help other musicians feel the same.
“I knew I loved music as soon as I started studying,” he says, “but I knew that finding my place in the music world would be difficult. I’ve been very lucky about finding my niche. Nantucket provides an escape where an artist can enjoy life and think closely about how to succeed as a musician.”
Together he and Feeney are networking with musicians and the local community to make NIAM a thriving organization. “It’s the most creative thing I’ve ever done,” Feeney says about co-founding NIAM. She and Behrman are cultivating supporters who eagerly anticipate their concerts and who want to see music play a more active role in their community. Feeney even reports that some people on Nantucket have good instruments in their homes and can accommodate chamber music performances, so she entices them to do so with the idea that, in the 1800s, women invited people into their homes for music, food, wine, and cultural discussions. In fact, part of Feeney’s and Behrman’s mission is to preserve Nantucket’s cultural heritage.
“Nantucket has historically functioned as an artists’ colony, especially for writers and painters,” Feeney explains. “The original founding artists of NIAM wanted to revive this tradition, making music central to the cultural life of the island.” NIAM will provide the Nantucket community with classical music performances and instruction year-round and host chamber music and opera festivals (Nantucket Opera Works, presenting La bohème this year) during the busy summer season.
NIAM’s structure allows musicians to perform for a cultured audience and, if they want extra income, to teach various age groups with diverse levels of enthusiasm. Artists can live on Nantucket full or part time, and they experience a high quality of life which is difficult for most artists to find but which Feeney and Behrman feel is essential to an artist’s well-being and success. During the summer music festival, emerging artists receive private instruction and coaching as well as participate in group musicianship classes (reinforcing basic musical skills like sight-singing) and weekly performances and recitals. Chamber operas on the scale of Dido and Aeneas or A Midsummer Night’s Dream are performed with a small accompanying ensemble. The summer program lasts seven weeks, encompassing most of July and all of August.
Another aspect of NIAM that Feeney and Behrman emphasize is that rising singers have contact with younger singers who are working professionally, rather than with singers who are retired. “My vision is to have younger, less experienced singers studying, coaching, and singing with more experienced working artists, and without the same formality as other programs,” Feeney says. “That way, the professional singers can coach younger singers in roles they themselves are still singing, rather than sang 25 years ago.”
Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Lane and lyric coloratura soprano Alison Trainer are among those professional singers. Lane and Feeney sang together at San Francisco Opera in 2005 while Lane was teaching voice at Stanford University and Feeney was an Adler Fellow. Lane is now associate professor at the University of North Texas and has maintained an active international performing career over a long period of time while simultaneously teaching young artists and helping to foster their careers. Some of her students have been district winners in the Met’s National Council Auditions and won prizes in other competitions.
“In NIAM’s elegant and artistic environment, the young artist will have wide latitude in exploring his or her repertoire and will take the lead in learning,” Lane says. “This is something I have taught since the beginning of my teaching—learning early in one’s career how to look at a score and determine if it is right for you. There is a vast repertoire that is so often ignored, simply because many teachers, and even companies, don’t know it and therefore don’t assign it.” Lane also sings Nantucket’s praises as a beautiful locale that encourages creativity and fosters healthy living.
Trainer also met Feeney when they were Young Artists in San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program. She now lives in St. Gallen, Switzerland, where she is a solo soprano at Theater St. Gallen (as part of a two-year Fest contract, she has a full-time salary as a house soloist). This season, her roles include Lisa in La sonnambula, Adele in Die Fledermaus and Rosina in Il barbiere di Siviglia, in addition to many concerts and recitals. Trainer has also sung with New York City Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, and Glimmerglass Opera, among other companies.
“So much of the time in our singing careers,” Trainer observes, “we sing whatever music we are hired to sing and play the roles we are hired to play. But NIAM will give me the chance to work on musical projects that are near and dear to my heart and that may have been neglected because of a busy work schedule. For me, this means chamber music and recitals, with music of my old favorites like Richard Strauss and Hugo Wolf and contemporary composers like composer-in-residence Ned Rorem.” Like Feeney and Behrman, she hopes to make Nantucket a prime destination for summer music à la Tanglewood, Interlochen, and Aspen, even making NIAM a home festival for herself in the midst of a busy international Career.
Nantucket Opera Works is no longer taking applications for the August 2011 performance of La bohème. If singers are interested in visiting Nantucket during the summer season to participate as paid teaching artists and to perform in solo recitals, send a résumé, photo, biography, and CD with contrasting live performance excerpts to NIAM c/o FCC, 62 Centre Street, Nantucket, MA 02554. Free or affordable options are available for housing, depending on whether a singer is willing to stay with a host family or share a house with other artists. For information about housing and the cost of attending NIAM, visit www.niamusic.org.
