Welcome to all of our friends of Eastern Music Festival! This is the first edition of a brand new newsletter, 50TH REFLECTIONS, to celebrate EMF’s 50th Anniversary in 2011. Though the seeds were planted in 1961 at Guilford College, the first students arrived in the summer of 1962 and gave the very first performances in Dana Auditorium. We have gathered REFLECTIONS from a broad cross-section of people associated with EMF: current and former faculty, board of directors members, executive directors, EMF and Guilford College staff, guest artists, students, media critics, representatives of outreach venues – virtually ANYONE with a long history with EMF. We have invited them to share whatever stories or memories they have as they reflect on their own association with the Festival. We’ll bring you one or more each Monday for 25 weeks up until the season begins on June 25. We hope you enjoy reading this wide variety of 50 years of REFLECTIONS as we move toward opening night!
Dr. Samuel M. LeBauer
Dr. Samuel M. LeBauer is co-chair of the EMF board of directors. He was a first cousin of Sheldon Morgenstern’s and one of the original organizers of EMF. Dr. LeBauer is a retired gastroenterologist living in Greensboro, NC.
"It was the spring of 1961. My cousin Shelly (Maestro Shelly Morgenstern) came to me with the idea of helping him start a music camp on the Guilford College campus. Shelly had attended several of the best summer music festivals in the United States. He thought most of these camps and festivals provided very little in the way of personal attention from the faculty members.
Shelly envisioned starting a music camp with fewer students and a more engaged faculty, where each student would have access to more individual instruction. He thought the correct ratio was approximately 2-3 students per faculty member. Well, I certainly liked his idea, but I thought that the camp would also need a sports program. We both loved athletics as well as music growing up, so we agreed that I would lead the effort to make athletics available to the students. We set out to recruit promising music students throughout the southeast. We were amazed at how many parents of high school children were willing to send them to a new music camp. Of course, we realized also we had to raise a significant amount of money to get the camp off the ground. It was a daunting task for two guys with no previous fundraising experience. That first year, we raised over $65,000, thanks to the generosity of music lovers, most of whom were from Greensboro.
Things seemed to be coming together. In the summer of 1962, the students arrived along with 28 enthusiastic teachers from orchestras throughout the southeast. Beautiful music started to flow from our students and faculty. Somewhat to my dismay, there was very little interest in my sports program. When I approached Shelly with my concern that the students were not participating in any sports, he did not seem surprised. He explained that these were serious music students and they were concerned about injuring themselves. Well, to my disappointment, the sports program lasted only three years. Overall, that first summer was a tremendous success, and we were anxious to continue on. The enthusiasm of the people of Greensboro and surrounding areas grew along with the program.
I was the head counselor for the second summer of the camp while I was still in medical school. But after that, I spent ten years in medical training programs so I was unable to participate in the summer camp. When I returned to Greensboro to practice medicine with my family, I couldn’t wait to return to the music festival. Music is my second love, and before I knew it, I was serving on the Board of Directors. Over the ensuing years, Eastern Music Festival continued to grow under the tutelage of Maestro Morgenstern. Over 200 students began coming to Greensboro each year from all over the world. Our faculty members are specially chosen members of symphonies far and wide. Shelly also invited outstanding guest performers and teachers, such as Leonard Rose, Josef Gingold, and Wynton Marsalis (a student at EMF for three years) to Greensboro. With the continued contributions of hundreds of patrons from throughout the Triad, the Festival has become one of the finest in the United States.
I often sit in the audience listening to the students performing so beautifully and reflect on how it all started. This always makes me smile.
For fifty years, EMF has prepared extraordinary young people for possible careers in classical music. It is my dream that we will continue to build on Shelly’s dream and now, with leadership from Maestro Gerard Schwarz, that EMF will continue to bring talented musicians and beautiful classical music to our community and the world for the next 50 years"
