You reached this page through the archive. Click here to return to the archive.

Note: This article is over a year old and information contained in it may no longer be accurate. Please use the contact information in the lower-left corner to verify any information in this article.

Ole professors to lead European Festival StudyTravel

By Tom Vogel
July 19, 2006

St. Olaf College's Center for Lifelong Learning (CLL) will sponsor European Festival Study Travel with the Minnesota Orchestra in August. St. Olaf Professor of History Laurel Carrington and Professor of Music Dan Dressen will lead seminars, provide historical and cultural contexts for the orchestra's tour repertoire, and guide visits to museums and other cultural sites that augment the concerts and seminars. The Study Travel programs will focus on the future of "art music," the history of cities along the tour, Europeans' support of the arts, the phenomenon of art festivals and the symphony orchestra as an institution.

Osmo Vanska
Osmo Vanska conducts the Minnesota Orchestra, which will perform six shows at five European festivals this summer.


During their tour, the Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Osmo Vanska, will perform in London, Edinburgh, Helsinki and Locarno, Switzerland, playing major works by Beethoven, Mahler and Sibelius, along with 20th- and 21st-century compositions by Samuel Barber and Osvaldo Golijov.

Travelers have the option of choosing from two Study Travel itineraries, the first being the Festival Trio, which runs from August 21 to 31 and includes three days each in London, Edinburgh, Amsterdam and Helsinki, as well as a Minnesota Orchestra concert in each city and time to experience festival events. The Compose-Your-Own City Combo, from August 21 to September 1, allows travelers to choose from one city to all five, or any combination thereof. Both opportunities are open to the public and are custom-designed for adults of all ages and teenagers traveling with adults.

THE STUDY TRAVEL LEADERS
Laurel Carrington
Carrington
Carrington, the Compose-Your-Own City Combo leader, has been a member of the St. Olaf faculty since 1988. She specializes in medieval, Renaissance and Reformation history, her main research interest being the 16th-century humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam. Carrington has published numerous essays and journal articles and worked extensively on two edited volumes in the Collected Works of Erasmus series, a project aimed at publishing scholarly editions of Erasmus' complete writings in English translation.

Carrington originally became involved with Study Travel when Heidi Quiram, program director for CLL, and Karen Hansen '77, executive director for CLL, saw her web page.

"They saw my background in history and music, and I received an unsolicited invitation to lead a Study Travel program," Carrington recalls. Although, in her words, she "ended up a historian," Carrington also is a violinist with a life-long interest in music. "The idea of following the Minnesota Orchestra around different cities in Europe was obviously very exciting," she says.

"This is a unique partnership and the first of its kind with the Minnesota Orchestra," Carrington says, noting that one of the major benefits of the Study Travel program is its interdisciplinary blend of music and history. In between concerts, Carrington will lead seminars that will look closely at each city on the itinerary, examining the histories, landmarks, life and development of the city beyond the usual tourist sites.

As a scholar of early modern history, Carrington says she is looking forward to visiting Amsterdam, which was a refuge for those fleeing religious persecution in the 16th and 17th centuries. "People tend to think of Amsterdam today as this socially forward place, but it was really that way centuries ago," she says.

Dan Dressen
Dressen
Dressen, who will lead the Festival Trio program, is an active tenor soloist who can be heard on several Aaron Copland recordings. His career has included performances with the Washington Opera, Minnesota Opera, Cleveland Lyric Opera, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, VocalEssence and several appearances at the Aldeburgh Festival in England. Dressen also is editor of a seven-part anthology series of opera arias by Benjamin Britten and is currently creating a center for Nordic art song at St. Olaf. In June 2005 -- Norway's centennial anniversary -- Dressen co-led a Study Travel program in Norway with Professor of Norwegian Solveig Zempel, while the St. Olaf Band, St. Olaf Choir and St. Olaf Orchestra toured Norway at the invitation of the Norwegian government.

Dressen says his primary responsibility during the Festival Trio program this summer will be to help contextualize the music the Study Travelers will be hearing. "The festival is a musical experience, but also cultural experience with its own qualities about it and with a life of its own," Dressen says. "We'll talk about musical and sociological events, the state of symphonic music in the 21st century and the challenges it's facing."

In addition to discussing the music itself, Dressen will encourage participants to look at the orchestra as a historical and contemporary ensemble. "This will include looking at the orchestral canon, as well as some very new things -- even to European audiences," he says. "We'll deal with what orchestra brings to the contemporary performance and composing scene," he adds, noting that many people tend to think of orchestra as a pre-20th-century art form. "In thinking this way, we doom it to a slow death," Dressen warns. "We need to make orchestra a living, breathing organism of the 21st century."

THE MINNESOTA ORCHESTRA
The Minnesota Orchestra's two-week tour will feature six performances at five major European festivals, including the Orchestra's debut at London's BBC Proms Festival, arguably the world's most famous classical music festival.

"It is a tribute to Osmo Vanska -- and his reputation with our Orchestra -- that we've been invited to take part in these European festivals," says Minnesota Orchestra President and CEO Tony Woodcock. "Orchestras frequently offer up sports analogies to explain the importance of touring, comparing an international tour to playing in the Super Bowl. In those terms, a major festival tour is akin to participating in the Olympics."

Dressen says that, although he is eagerly anticipating all of the stops on the Festival Trio itinerary, he is especially looking forward to the Proms Festival in London. "I've never been to Royal Albert Hall before, and just to be part of this festival, in that space and with these people will be a real gas," he says.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.