In the early 1970s, a group of like-minded musicians decided to
rehearse, perform, and coach chamber music at a serene New Hampshire
farm. Thirty years later, the Apple Hill Chamber Players are still
going strong, but now they travel the world promoting peace through
music. Not only do they take their music to war-ravaged places,
but they bring students from warring countries together to perform
music at the Apple Hill farm.
Eric Stumacher, director and a founding member of Apple Hill, recalls
the creation of the group. "The beginnings of Apple Hill and
the Apple Hill Chamber Players constituted an intersection between
friendships born and nurtured at Aspen, Oberlin, and Juilliard,
and fueled by a desire to pursue our music in a beautiful, natural
outdoor setting," he says. Both concert preparations and summer
camps took (and still take) place at the farm, with the focal point
being a grand old barn converted into concert space.
At first, the summer chamber music program was geared toward enthusiastic
high-school students from around the country. (I know this, because
I was one of them.) Then the focus shifted to encompass a broader
student body. "We soon diversified our student base to include
all generations and abilities ranging from professional to intermediate
amateur," Stumacher says.
A decade later, the Apple Hill student clientele diversified further.
The Chamber Players had been performing concerts year round throughout
the United States. In 1988, however, the group was invited on its
first international tour. "When we were invited to Israel under
the auspices of the U.S. State Department and U.S. Embassy, the
idea of awarding scholarships to Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians,
so that they could attend the Apple Hill Summer School and Festival,
was a logical outgrowth of building community through diversity,"
he recalls. "It's what we had always done and strived for at
Apple Hill."
Last summer, students from great distances, often from places of
strife, worked together to perform chamber music in the intimate
setting of the Apple Hill farm. Specifically, participants traveled
from Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Northern Ireland,
Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. Closer to home, several inner-city
students attended from Dallas, New York, Providence, Memphis, Los
Angeles, and other locales. The results, Stumacher says, are astonishing.
"Their interaction at Apple Hill is phenomenal," he observes.
"All become very close friends by playing music together, by
living together, playing soccer and other sports, working together
to run Apple Hill."
The students concur. Israeli cellist Dor Abrahamson shared an Apple
Hill chamber group with Palestinian flutist Abeer Muslehwho in August
2001, and later penned this: "It's been some time since Apple
Hill now. I’ve been wanting to write to you ever since, but
somehow have never really known exactly what it is I wish to say.
Apple Hill is a special place where things can happen without words.
We have the mountain there, and we can just sit on the red wagon
and gaze at the trees rolling down past the horizon. Or we can float
on our backs in the pond and watch the clouds gliding by as though
the rest of the world is not at war. We can play music, and the
force of the great composers binds us and invites us to join in
the serene glory."
Lewis Martinez, a bass player from Dallas, had these thoughts on
the influence of Apple Hill: "I have been playing musical instruments
since I was five. I started on the violin, changed to the cello,
and then switched to the bass because we didn’t have enough
in our middle school. I kept playing through high school, and throughout
my whole music career I wasn't playing music! I was really just
playing notes, and there is a big difference from playing notes
and playing music.
"Not until I was invited and attended my first year of Apple
Hill did I realize what music playing was all about."
The Apple Hill Chamber Players annually tour the Middle East. The
1992 tour of Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria became the subject
of the widely viewed PBS-TV documentary "Playing for Peace."
In the 2002–2003 season, the Playing for Peace program has
taken the Chamber Players to Azerbaijan, Soviet Georgia, Armenia,
Ireland, and England, as well as Ankara, Istanbul, Syria, Israel,
and Cyprus. They also play for schools throughout New Hampshire,
and perform this spring in Dallas, Memphis, and Los Angeles. Summer
participants are sure to come from many of the cities from the tours.
For the past six years, the New Hampshire governor has proclaimed
that the final day of the summer festival is officially Playing
for Peace Day.
For more information on Apple Hill, call (800) 472-6677, or email
info@applehill.org, or visit
the Apple Hill website at www.applehill.org.
Photo
at top: (from left) Michael Kelley, Rupert Thompson, Eric Stumacher,
Elise Kuder, and Richard Hartshorne.
