Musicorda

January 13, 2006 at 03:13 AM · I saw something about it on the Strings magazine website; I think Rachel Barton Pyne is the director. The website is still down, tho.

January 14, 2006 at 12:21 AM · I think I was trying to look into the camp also and found out that because of financial difficulties it doens't exist anymore. I could be thinking of something else but I think it was this.

July 10, 2006 at 04:57 PM · Hi Folks,

Since I'm based in Amherst, MA, I can give you a very precise update on the Musicorda situation. I attended Musicorda concerts for the past ten years or so.

Musicorda in 2005 suffered a one-two punch from which it couldn't recover. In the wake of the retirement of the Musicorda co-founders ( Leo "Terry" Teraspulski and Jackie Melnick), at the end of the 2004 season, paid audience attendance for the Summer 2005 Musicorda program collapsed. This created a major financial crisis. Much of the audience had been personally very loyal to Jackie and Terry and their energetic leadership; and so their departure, though understandable, was a major setback for Musicorda. FYI, a press article discussing their retirement is still available here:

http://tinyurl.com/fkc9y

Rachel Barton Pine is a superb concert artist, but she frankly didn't have the audience-and-donor-building skills of the original founders. The collapse of attendance in 2005 was then followed by the sudden death of Jackie Melnick herself, in the autumn of last year. At this point, the Board of Directors prudently decided that the summer program should be concluded.

However, all is not lost. Terry Teraspulski has assigned Musicorda's scholarship assets to the Yellow Barn Festival and Music School, based in Putney, VT. The two programs are, in fact, "astral twins" in terms of their shared mission: to give very gifted young players an opportunity to work intensively with a top-notch faculty, while participating in a high-profile "real life" concert series.

For the past two summers (2005 and 2006), Yellow Barn (YB) has commuted between its anchor campus in Putney, VT, and the spectacular concert hall and practice facilities of the Music Department of Amherst College in Amherst, MA -- offering a very full program of weekly concerts at both venues. YB is thrilled and honored that Musicorda has now "passed the torch" (along with significant Musicorda scholarship assets) to YB, in acknowledgment of their common mission. YB launched their 2006 season in May with a memorial concert in tribute to the late Jackie Melnick.

You can do a Google on the Yellow Barn Festival, and learn much more about their summer program. Here's a link:

http://tinyurl.com/f6mug

Hope this helps to clarify things for those who asked. Anyone wishing to correspond further about the transition is most welcome to contact me.