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Bringing baroque to a modern Boston

By Anna Lehn '11
May 23, 2011

It is hardly surprising to encounter a St. Olaf student with a passion for music and a desire to go places. But this summer Zach Gingerich '13 will be traveling across the country and back in time with a rather unusual instrument in tow: the sackbut.

Gingerich will be playing this early ancestor of the trombone in the Boston Early Music Festival this June. Along with 33 other outstanding student-musicians from colleges across the nation, he was selected to perform with the Early Music America Young Performers Festival Ensemble. The ensemble, created to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Early Music America, will rehearse for the week of June 12–18 under conductor Scott Metcalf in preparation for a concert on June 18 at the First Church of Boston.

A new horn
Although Gingerich came to St. Olaf intending to study music performance, he admits that he never expected to stray too far from his primary instrument, the trombone. "I wouldn't say that I ever really had specific interests for early music. I was just asked to play sackbut in the wind band for Collegium Musicum, so I thought I'd give it a try."

Picking up a new instrument is never an easy task, especially if, like Gingerich, you're already busy playing trombone in the St. Olaf Orchestra and Jazz I, working as a technician in the Lion's Pause, acting as vice president of the Camping Club, and playing on an intramural softball team. But Gingerich relishes the opportunity to grow. "It's actually the challenging aspects of playing the sackbut that make it enjoyable. The bass sackbut, which I play most of the time, is in the key of F, which is quite a change from the standard key for tenor trombones (B-flat). This, combined with the fact that I'm usually reading music in clefs that I'm not used to, results in the brain-straining experience that I enjoy most about playing the sackbut."

Viols and operas
This openness to test out a new instrument helped Gingerich hone his skills as a musician, and his dedication has paid off. He won one of just three sackbut positions in the EMA Young Performers Festival Ensemble, along with a full scholarship for room, board, and transportation to Boston. He will play alongside the full range of early ancestors to our modern musical instruments, including viols, violones, and lutes, predecessors to contemporary stringed instruments, and recorders and cornetts, predecessors to contemporary wind instruments.

The ensemble will perform as part of the celebrated Boston Early Music Festival, which brings together professional early music ensembles from around the country for a week of concerts and workshops, including a fully staged production of the 17th century opera Niobe, Regina di Tebe. For Early Music America, the goal of the Young Performers Festival Ensemble is to ensure that these performance traditions continue.

Even though Gingerich plans to focus most of his energy on the trombone in the future, he has no intention of laying his sackbut to rest. His goals include attending graduate school for music performance and eventually winning a seat in a major orchestra. "In any case," he says optimistically, "I'll probably end up doing some other freelance stuff in smaller venues, where my sackbut abilities are sure to come in handy."

Contact Kari VanDerVeen at 507-786-3970 or vanderve@stolaf.edu.