A Model Laboratory High School student is one of only 180 high school students selected to participate in the internationally prestigious Brevard Music Center Summer Institute in North Carolina.
Nathan Richey, a rising junior, will join students from all over the world at the six-week event, one of the country’s premier summer training programs and festivals. While at Brevard, he will study with a distinguished faculty of more than 80 artists from the nation’s leading orchestras, colleges and conservatories. This year’s institute is under the artistic direction of acclaimed conductor and BMC alumnus Keith Lockhart, principal conductor of the Boston Pops and the BBC Orchestra in London.
The 15-year-old clarinetist, who has studied and performed with the Kentucky All-State Band, the Honor Band of America, and Boston University’s Tanglewood Institute Young Artists Ensemble, also qualified this year for the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, but chose to attend the Brevard institute.
“I think going to Brevard will be a wonderful experience for three reasons,” Richey said. “I’ll be able to play a combination of chamber music, orchestral music and band music; take master classes and lessons with professional musicians; and surround myself with the best musicians at both the high school and college level.”
He attributed his success to the support of his parents, private lesson teacher Adria Sutherland, and his middle school band director, Brandon Stinnett, “for giving me the initial push to be my best. It was at Model that I started playing clarinet. The atmosphere of acceptance and encouragement at Model has helped me quite a bit.”
In all, more than 400 young musicians, age 14 through post-college, come to the Brevard Music Center each summer. Participants learn by sitting with principal players from major symphonies, attending seminars with Grammy-winning composers, working with masterful conductors and soloists, and attending the nearly 80 performances presented each session.
Over the past eight decades, Brevard has welcomed many of the world’s most famous musicians to perform with its student orchestra. Yo-Yo Ma, Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman are just a few of the artists who have performed in the 1,800-seat open-air lakeside auditorium during a music festival that welcomes more than 40,000 attendees each summer.