Wintergreen Music

Festival and lead cooperative: the Wintergreen Music festival is held for four weeks each summer at Wintergreen resort and neighboring venues, attracting audiences, visitors, as well as top musicians and aspiring students to the blue ridge mountains. Full orchestra concerts are performed each weekend along with chamber Music and collaborative concerts with area partners to enhance the collective region. Concerts, seminars, cooking classes, and masterclasses are presented daily and audiences enjoy many genres of Music including classical, jazz, bluegrass, pop, and more. The health and development of relationships with partner organizations significantly contributed to the successful return of a full festival with large orchestra, guest conductors, and typical audience capacities. Community-based organizations, area businesses, and nonprofit partners including Wintergreen resort, wpoa, Wintergreen real estate, Virginia museum of fine Arts, oratorio society of Virginia, richmond symphony chorus, nelson county community center, jaba, nelson county public schools, veritas vineyard & winery, three notch'd brewing, and valley road vineyards.

Music education program: the newly-introduced lead cooperative (learn, explore, adapt, diversify) strengthens the mission of Wintergreen Music by welcoming scholars into a supportive environment to transform their craft while connecting with professional musicians as educators, collaborators, and colleagues, and learning how to inspire and educate their future audiences through Music. Lead is the next step in significant portions of wm's vision to: 1) achieve excellence in musical performance and teaching; 2) be nationally recognized as a top-tier summer classical Music festival and teaching academy (now lead cooperative); 3) be a model of inclusive and inviting community building through Music making; 4) recruit passionate and high-quality students to benefit from the academy (now lead) and become long-term members and supporters of the wm community. Lead is an innovative, cross-disciplinary chamber Music curriculum crafted with feedback from academy alumni, faculty, relevant industry topics, and pedagogical best practices, with a focus on adapting Music performance to the "post-covid" landscape. This evolution is designed primarily for students on the cusp of their professional careers, from advanced undergraduate to postgraduate. Studies include program-specific classes, one-on-one meetings, cross-disciplinary workshops and masterclasses, and chamber Music experience both within and outside of students' primary discipline, helping to support well-rounded musicians ready to step up to and make a difference in the classical Music industry. Lead combines the live academy's strengths (public performances alongside professionals, public workshops, masterclasses) & the 2021 virtual academy, which addressed topics not typically covered in academia (injury/illness recovery, multi-disciplinary collaboration, recording technology, diversity, equity & inclusion in the rehearsal room, etc.)

As the return to regular and growing audience sizes with the 4-week festival presentation has continued post-pandemic, Wintergreen Music explored variations in off-season offerings. Collaborations with veritas vineyard & winery in the fall and in the spring increased audience awareness of the main summer festival and lead cooperative education initiative. A holiday concert collaboration with area partners rockfish valley community center and the Virginia consort was also presented in december.