Hot Springs Music Festival Aims to Spread Appreciation of Classical Music

Zoie Clift, travel writer
Arkansas Tourism

The Hot Springs Music Festival brings together hundreds of international musicians each year to the city. From May 31- June 13 over 200 international musicians will present 20 concerts and 250 free open rehearsals of symphony orchestra, chamber orchestra, chamber music, oratorio and opera.

“From our very first day we have been an International music festival that happens to be located here in Hot Springs,” said festival director Laura Rosenberg.

Over 20,000 people attended the festival last year, and millions have heard its concerts via broadcasts on National Public Radio, Public Television and CD’s released on the Naxos label.

Now in its 14th year, the two-week festival has put the city on the nation’s classical music map.

The larger concept of the event is to make sure classical music is and remains relevant to people today by making the music easily accessible to a wide audience range.

Rosenberg said the most misunderstood aspect of classical music is that you need special training or education to appreciate it. To combat this, the organization tries to make the festival welcoming to everyone. The festival is casual in atmosphere and events take place in a variety of non-traditional venues such as historic buildings, art galleries, and open-air spaces.

Also of note is that rehearsals, as well as concerts, are all open to the public; a rare scenario in the realm of festival and symphony orchestras. Rehearsals are also free to attend. “If a child only has a 15 minute attention span it isn’t a problem to come in and out at a rehearsal,” said Rosenberg. “It doesn’t have to be a situation of feeling you have to make a commitment of an entire two hour concert so it’s a delightful way to get a first taste of what we do.”

The rehearsals also offer the opportunity to observe the process of the music being built. “From the first time the musicians read the music together to the final concert is a process and that process is sometimes even more fascinating and revealing than the concert result itself,” Rosenberg said.

Another goal of the event is to demystify the concert experience for attendees. “Our musicians don’t dress in 19th century formal wear as they still do in a lot of symphony orchestras,” said Rosenberg. “We are trying to evolve a new comfort level for our performers in dressing how the audience dress.” Rosenberg said historically, musicians started wearing formal white tie and tails or black tie for concerts because their audience was doing the same thing. “That’s what people wore in the evening,” said Rosenberg. “And now they don’t. Now it’s different. So we feel the concert experience needs to reflect what’s going on in people’s real lives. Or else it will literally become a museum piece. I think it’s important people be able to realize the music still has meaning for them. And not be distracted in that realization by the trappings of another era.”

The festival also creates an interesting musical mix in that it pairs world-class mentor musicians with pre-professional apprentices. The two groups play "side by side" in various repertoires throughout the event.

“I particularly love the orchestral concerts because you hear more of our young musicians performing at the same time than you do in the chamber or smaller format concerts,” said Rosenberg. “The energy of these young musicians when they play side by side with their mentors presents the core of our mission. You have the experience of the older musicians tempered with the freshness and enthusiasm of the younger ones. It is a marvelous dynamic that I think can’t be underestimated for its impact on the musicians themselves and on the audience.”

The orchestra concerts are performed in a 1952 fieldhouse originally built for sports. It has a curved wooden roof ideal for acoustics. All the concerts performed at the festival are unplugged and performed in natural acoustic environments.

People fly in from all over the world to be part of the apprentice program and there is no geographic preference given in the selection process. According to Rosenberg, about 3-5% of the apprentices are from Arkansas or have a strong state connection, a strong representation in a program filled with very competitive and high caliber prospects. “I think that speaks well to the level of interest among young Arkansans for this field,” she said. “We have a very loyal Arkansan audience as well and one that is growing. That is in addition to the national and international cultural tourism audience we enjoy from the people who travel here for the festival.”

Rosenberg and her husband (Richard Rosenberg, who serves as artistic director and conductor) created and brought the festival to the city after spending almost 20 years working all over the world in various aspects of the genre. “We really felt from the beginning of our careers that it was extremely important for this music to stay relevant to people and we felt existing classical music organizations were not positioning themselves to perhaps make that happen,” she said. “We decided we wanted to be part of the solution.”

The pair spent 10 years (while working other jobs) preparing a plan to create an organization to address these issues. They then went out in search of a host community in which to grow the organization. They traveled all over the country in search of the right location (56 communities to be exact) and chose Hot Springs out of 5 finalists.

“Hot Springs was a perfect combination of a place that had cherished its historic downtown district which we felt was extremely important for doing what we wanted to do,” said Rosenberg. “It had a lot of those historic buildings left and could also comfortably accommodate a large number of visitors at all socioeconomic levels…Equally important was the fact that we fell in love with the city so it was a choice of the heart as well as the head.”

Since coming to town, the festival has become an integral part of the thriving local arts community, both bringing people together and helping spread the appreciation of classical music. “Music is communication,” said Rosenberg. “And any way that you can communicate better either through music or about music I think is another way of people being able to communicate with each other.”

A schedule of events and further details on the festival are available at www.hotmusic.org or by calling 501-623-4763. A festival season pass is $125 donation and single tickets are available on a first come first serve basis via donation. Rehearsals and pre-concert talks are free and open to everyone.