When Music in the Mountains Conservatory Director Arkady Fomin unexpectedly retired last fall after 17 years, Music Director Greg Hustis didn’t have to travel far to find a worthy successor.
“His office is just down the hall from mine,” said interim Conservatory Artistic Director Matt Albert last week during his first visit to Durango.
Albert and Hustis share a hallway at Southern Methodist University near Dallas where the former is the Director of Chamber Music at Meadows School of the Arts. He was in town to meet with festival staff and board members but will return to Texas until this summer’s festival.
For the professor and accomplished violinist, the opportunity for Albert to put it all together is a new and exciting opportunity, and we can expect to see a bold and experimental group of young musicians for 2014.
“In Dallas, I run a program,” Albert said. “But the idea of having a festival to try out these teaching values is tremendously inspiring. I want to engage the audience instead of them just sitting there. We have an opportunity in Durango to try more, and it’s really thrilling, the idea of being here.”
This year’s conservatory will be trimmed from three weeks to two, and Albert is planning five or six concerts combining students and professional/faculty musicians with an emphasis on the collaboration between the two groups.
“I cannot imagine a better person to take over, continue and further develop the great work started by Arkady Fomin,” Hustis said of his colleague. “Matt is energetic, experienced and superbly creative. More exciting times lie ahead for Conservatory Music in the Mountains.”
In addition to his faculty position at SMU, Albert is the director of the new ensemble SYZYGY and was a founding member of the Chicago ensemble eighth blackbird, with whom he received numerous awards, including first prize at the Naumburg, Concert Artists Guild, Coleman and Fischoff Competitions and three Grammy awards for their recordings on Cedille Records. He has worked with artists as diverse as Meredith Monk, Corky Siegel’s Chamber Blues and Wilco, and he subs regularly with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He is a member of the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, where he currently holds the principal second-violin chair under Marin Alsop and has been on the faculty of the Eastern Music Festival since 2012. Albert holds degrees from Oberlin College and Conservatory, Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and Northwestern University School of Music.
ted@durangoherald.com
