{"id":126899,"date":"2019-09-09T16:34:07","date_gmt":"2019-09-09T20:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=126899"},"modified":"2019-09-20T12:07:40","modified_gmt":"2019-09-20T16:07:40","slug":"my-maine-summer-salt-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2019\/09\/09\/my-maine-summer-salt-bay\/","title":{"rendered":"My Maine Summer: Miriam Smith \u201985 and a little night music by the bay"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn Maine in the summer, why wouldn\u2019t you want to hear chamber music?\u201d wonders Miriam Smith \u201985, a violinist, educational consultant, and founding board member of Salt Bay Chamberfest<\/a>, in Damariscotta.<\/p>\n

As rhetorical questions go, that one\u2019s all but bulletproof. Does live chamber music feed your soul during the cold gray months of the formal concert season? If so, then imagine how sated your soul will feel soaking in that music on a soft summer evening amidst green trees and water views.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
My Maine Summer<\/h6>\n

From Kennebunk to Katahdin, from lobsters to lakes, we offer My Maine Summer \u2014 profiles of alumni<\/a> whose work, play, and family life have a distinctive Maine-in-summer vibe.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

This logic has produced a constellation of Maine summer music festivals and camps dating back at least to 1902, when violinist Franz Kneisel founded a chamber music school, Kneisel Hall, that\u2019s still going strong in Blue Hill. Mostly a coastal phenomenon, these institutions have also turned up inland \u2014 such as the bygone Saco River Festival, in Cornish, founded by the late, legendary Bates pianist Frank Glazer and his wife, Ruth.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/a>

Salt Bay Chamberfest supporters Miriam Smith ’85 and Mike Acton ’85, and festival artistic director Mina Smith. (Photograph by Peter Felsenthal)<\/p><\/div>\n

Residents of Harvard, Mass., Miriam Smith and her husband, Michael Acton \u201985, are especially close to Salt Bay: Smith\u2019s sister, cellist and artistic director Wilhelmina Smith, founded the festival 25 years ago. (A managing director and head of research at AEW Capital Management in Boston, Michael has served on the Salt Bay board and is acting treasurer. And in another Bates connection to Salt Bay, the late Mary Reynolds, a singer and the wife of former Bates President Hedley Reynolds, was a founding board member.)<\/p>\n

Wilhelmina was driven to launch Salt Bay by her interests in advancing contemporary and world music, giving her fellow musicians some gigs, offering robust educational programming, and building strong community ties. In that last area, she got a head start: Priscilla Smith, Miriam and Wilhelmina\u2019s mother, has had a home near Damariscotta in the village of Walpole for decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cThough I lived in Massachusetts during the year,\u201d Miriam says, \u201cI grew up coming to Maine for the summer.\u201d The extended family still likes \u201cto gather together\u201d in Walpole, visits that include a healthy dose of Salt Bay music.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/a>

Festival artist Claire Chase performs on bass flute in the Darrows Barn on Aug. 9. (Photograph by Peter Felsenthal)<\/p><\/div>\n

Chamberfest concerts are held for two weeks every August at the former Round Top Dairy farm, a site owned by the Coastal Rivers Conservation Trust on the picturesque Damariscotta River (and a short walk from the famous Whaleback Shell Midden State Historic Site). Miriam calls the setting \u201cgorgeous \u2014 it\u2019s just absolutely beautiful. You\u2019re looking out toward the river and it\u2019s peaceful, bucolic, really lovely.\u201d<\/p>\n

The festival treats aren\u2019t all visual and musical. The Moo Caf\u00e9 serves desserts and adult beverages, while food trucks have been known to appear on the grounds and the renowned Round Top Ice Cream stand is close enough that kids can run up for an ice cream during intermissions.<\/p>\n

The concert venue itself is the Darrows Barn, built 90 years ago to store hay (which is still produced at Round Top). Because the main road is some distance away, the big screen doors in the back of the barn admit fresh air but no traffic noise. Wooden barn walls make for good acoustics and Darrows, which seats about 250, is no exception.<\/p>\n

Wilhelmina Smith, aka Mina but rhyming with \u201cChina,\u201d emphasizes modern and contemporary music in her concert programs. And summer makes musical adventures possible that don\u2019t work in January. Miriam describes a performance of Iannis Xenakis\u2019 \u201cPersephassa\u201d a couple of years ago for which six percussionists set up their gear at points surrounding the audience, who were then encouraged to move around the barn and experience different mixes, so to speak, of the music.<\/p>\n

\"Most<\/a>

Most Salt Bay Chamberfest concerts take place in the Darrows Barn at the Round Top farm in Damariscotta, Maine. (Photograph by Peter Felsenthal)<\/p><\/div>\n

And then the next day, Miriam adds, the festival reprised the performance outdoors in the nearby seaside town of Round Pond \u2014 with the percussionists stationed on floats and docks on the harbor. \u201cIt was amazing,\u201d says Miriam.<\/p>\n

The festival is a touchstone for Miriam and Michael. \u201cIt\u2019s two weeks of summer that we know is going to happen, that we can plan for \u2014 that we know, no matter which concert or concerts we make it to, we\u2019re going to be remembered by people we\u2019ve seen there before,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

For example, Brentano String Quartet violinist Mark Steinberg \u201chas been there almost every year since 1995. He has watched my children grow up \u2014 my oldest child was born the year the festival started. And we\u2019ve watched the musicians\u2019 children grow up.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd a lot of the musicians\u2019 children are also becoming accomplished musicians, and so you see this kind of generational legacy every year. So it really feels like a family.\u201d Speaking of which, Miriam adds that \u201cmany times, especially in the early years, everyone who was there to perform would gather down at my mother\u2019s house. And we would have these huge dinners.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Violinist<\/a>

Violinist Miriam Smith ’85, center, is shown with one of her campus bands, Mir and the Bad Examples, in the 1985 Mirror<\/em>. The other members are, from left, Adam Abelson ’85, Paul Maciuika ’86, Pete Cassat ’85, and Sam Paul ’85.<\/p><\/div>\n

Although she has not made a full-time career of music as Mina has, Miriam plays chamber music with a handful of Bay State ensembles and rocks the Massachusetts\u2013New Hampshire country music scene with Backyard Swagger<\/a>. (She\u2019s also on the board of directors at Indian Hill Music School in Littleton, Mass.)<\/p>\n

Even at Bates, Miriam was combining classical and more mainstream genres. She was concertmaster for the college orchestra, performed chamber repertoire with Frank Glazer \u2014 and played parties with Mir and the Bad Examples and Subculture Sextet. Those outfits gave her \u201cmy first experience of playing something other than classical music.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, she adds, \u201cA big part of the reason I came to Bates was my own summer music experiences in Maine.\u201d In her teens, she attended a summertime International String Quartet Workshop run by the Portland String Quartet at the Sugarloaf ski resort, as did Mina.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was really unique about Sugarloaf is that it was people from all over, and younger people as well as much older people,\u201d Miriam says. Learning to communicate socially with folks from different backgrounds was valuable. But the training in musical communication was priceless, says Smith. \u201cWhen you hear really great chamber music, you\u2019re watching the communication amongst the musicians and it\u2019s really exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaine chamber music in the summer was just a huge part of my growing up,\u201d Miriam says. \u201cFor me, Maine and summer and music just go hand in hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/a>

Ian Antonio performs Iannis Xenakis\u2019 \u201cPersephassa\u201d in Round Pond Harbor in 2017. (Photograph by Peter Felsenthal)<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn Maine in the summer, why wouldn\u2019t you want to hear chamber music?\u201d wonders Miriam Smith \u201985, a violinist and supporter of Salt Bay Chamberfest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":126900,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[7,133,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-creativity","category-maine-and-new-england"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126899"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127233,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126899\/revisions\/127233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}