Back meets Vivaldi in Paradise

The silence stretched like a taut violin string as more than 150 people sat waiting for sundown.

“I've been trying to get out here for the past three years,” said one woman from Missoula. She grinned. “It was worth the wait.”

On the final night of the 5th Annual Montana Baroque music festival, which ran from Tuesday to Thursday last week, the emcee asked how many people had never been to the concerts before. About a third of the audience raised their hands. The rest were veterans.

Charles and Cathy Meyer from Rollins have been coming to the festival every night for the past four years.

“It's just too big to be missed,” Cathy said. “Every night is fantastic.”

According to Mary Lou Hermes, one of the members of the Sanders County Arts Council, the origins of the festival were more accident than anything.

“It all started because [Monica Huggett] thought she would bicycle across Montana,” Hermes said.

London-born Huggett was already one of the world's leading baroque violists when she started peddling down the road in 2004. She had helped form the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and was its concert master from 1980-1987. Huggett is currently director of the Portland Baroque Orchestra and has been asked to head up a department at the famous Julliard school of music - the reason the dates of the music festival will change next year to July 21-23.

Huggett was tired and accepted a ride from Jean Morrison, or, as Hermes calls her, “the heart of the music festival.” As they talked, Morrison had an idea: Why not bring Baroque to Paradise?

“I thought it would be a unique kind of music to bring to Montana - especially when people don't even know what it is,” Morrison said. “They say I like that ‘bark' music or I like that ‘barbecue' music.”

Huggett must have agreed, because that summer saw the birth of the first Baroque festival.

This year, nine musicians gathered on the to play Baroque compositions on the tiny stage outside Quinn's resort - which had been pretty much booked up for the event. Though some of the songs from Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Vivaldi were familiar even to classical music neophytes, the performers mixed some lesser-known songs into the agenda, including a concerto by Giovanni Battista Sammartini and sonatas by Giovanni Antonio Pandolfi Mealli and Georg Philipp Telemann. Montreal-based Matthias Maute even added an original Bach-styled solo piece composed specifically for a Baroque recorder. Bach never created a solo for a recorder, so Maute said he tried to fill in the lapse.

“And if I got one note wrong, tell me,” he told the audience.

But it was returning violinist Huggett who stole the stage. Her energy and intensity wooed the listeners. She and the other musicians earned a standing ovation.

Aside from the concert, the arts council also held a live and a silent auction. Hermes said the money raised from the ticket sales and from the auctions fell far short of the cost that would normally be necessary to bring the accomplished musicians to Montana.

“We never, ever raise anywhere enough to pay those people,” she said. “We do grants and fundraisers all year long.”

Morrison estimated the auction made about $1,300 - better than last year, but a far cry from the $22,000 to bring the musicians to Paradise. Grants, private donations and corporate sponsors help defray the costs, but the arts council also relies on volunteerism. Volunteers even built the stage the musicians play on. When it's not in use, Hermes said she stores it in her barn.

Morrison said her favorite part of the festival is enjoying the company of the musicians.

“The musicians are all my dear friends,” she said. “We just have a ball, we don't have any ego to deal with or jealousies. We're just one big family. We all have a very delightful time, and that makes beautiful music.” Less than a week after the festival, one of the musicians has already written Morrison saying how much he misses Paradise.

Part of the reason the musicians enjoy playing in rural Montana is because of “intimacy,” Morrison said.

“They're not in a big hall playing to kind of an unknown group,” she explained. “They go out and they mingle with the people here.”

It gave the musicians opportunities they might not otherwise have had. A 98-year-old music teacher from Missoula couldn't come on Thursday night of the festival - the only day Huggett was planning to play. But when he and his wife arrived on Wednesday, Morrison had a surprise: Huggett had heard about their situation and decided to play on Wednesday, just for them. During intermission, the music teacher and the musician talked about their art and craft.

“That couldn't have happened in a big concert hall,” Morrison said.

Though the festival is a lot of work each year, Hermes said that, five years into it, they've worked out some of the rough edges.

“Every year, we get it running a little smoother,” she explained.

Some difficulties are outside of organizers' control. This year, a thunderstorm bypassed the concert by a day. Last year, the festival wasn't so lucky, and instruments, players and audience members had to rush inside out of the rain.

“It doesn't sound like fun, but it was,” Hermes said, laughing.

The Baroque musicians also visited the People's Center in Pablo, where the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes and the medieval classical players each shared their music.

“We thought it would be nice for a musical cultural exchange,” Morrison said, “the musicians who come out here haven't been from any reservation…we had a great time up there.”

Marie Torosian, director of the museum and cultural center the People's Center, said it had been a success.

“Music opens the doors to everyone,” she said. “It's the beginning, so everybody can sit down and really hear each other.”

She was especially pleased to see the flute players comparing differences between their wind instruments - something she said entertained both the audience and the players alike. Torosian hopes to hold similiar cultural exchanges in the future, now that the door is open.

“I guarentee people, we will do this again,” she said. Morrison said she would also be interested in another exchange if grant money is available.

On the final night of the festival, Morrison received a bouquet of flowers and a standing ovation for her role coordinating the concerts.

“It's hard to understand people thanking me for doing something that I love,” she told the crowd. “This is a work of joy.”