Tuesday, July 27, 2004 | 8:09 a.m.
His passion is unbridled. Like a steep crescendo, Jack Rappaport's voice elevates, really elevates, when talking about the Las Vegas Music Festival.
He becomes ecstatic when talking about students performing and learning alongside professional musicians. But ask him what the festival, held at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada, does for the community and he's over the edge.
"A lot of people don't even know the north end of the campus exists!" Rappaport shrieks into the phone with a raspy voice. "They don't know that Itzhak Perlman is coming back next year, that the BBC (Symphony Orchestra) performed here, that Hal Holbrook performed as Mark Twain here."
He pauses, then continues quietly.
"Where it becomes a unique experience is where the students perform with faculty as colleagues," said Rappaport, who is president of the festival's board of directors. "Sitting next to you might be somebody from the New York Philharmonic. They're conducted by James DePreist. Then you have Hilary Hahn coming out and performing with the orchestra."
You can hardly blame Rappaport for his zeal. To see DePreist a world-class conductor and director of orchestral studies at the Juilliard School -- gracing a Las Vegas stage for an evening will cost you $10 at the festival (free for students). The cost is the same to hear Hahn perform Paganini.
Essentially, the three-week event is a Lollapalooza of 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century music with an educational bent.
Music by Mozart, Mahler, Stravinsky, Bartok, Liszt and Schumann fill the auditoriums. Master classes, open to the public, are taught by prominent musicians from across the country.
There are violinists from the Oregon Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra and the Eastman School of Music, cellists from the New York Philharmonic and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Pianists will arrive from the Juilliard School and St. Petersburgh Conservatory in Russia.
"It's a fantastic boot camp warm-up for the students who are in high school or college, before they go back to their respective institutions," Rappaport said. "The music they perform, these are not easy pieces. They are very challenging pieces to play. It tests them.
"This isn't a walk in the park, but it's not meant to be. It's meant for them to walk away and say, 'Wow, that was intense.' "
Growing in stature
Compared to other festivals across the country, the Las Vegas Music Festival is small, but gaining name recognition in orchestral circles throughout the states. It grows mostly through word of mouth by performers who have attended.
"Because of the way the festival has grown, it's become easier to get these high-profile performers to come out and play," said George Stelluto, music director for the festival and UNLV symphony orchestra. "As we get better, our reputation gets better and people with the right mind-set want to help. We have people who return every year."
Stelluto's connections helped bring in DePreist, whose schedule is usually booked four or five years in advance.
In 23 years as musical director for the Oregon Symphony, DePreist brought the orchestra to the national stage. In April he will be taking over as conductor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra.
"I met Jimmy years ago when I was a student at the Aspen Music Festival," Stelluto said. "He was a guest conductor and I was one of his assistants. We got along real well. He invited me to be an assistant at his festival for the next three years. He was a wonderful mentor while I was getting my degrees at Yale."
Stelluto, who has conducted such orchestras as the Ukrainian National Orchestra, Kiev Philharmonic and Wieniawski String Orchestra of Poland, will head to the Juilliard School this fall, where he will join the school's prestigious Artist Diploma Program as the first conductor ever invited to do so.
Festivals played a large role in his schooling.
"The music festivals I went to as a student really helped me make a lot of progress fast," Stelluto said. "I understand what they're experiencing. Sometimes it's overwhelming, but that's part of it too.
"The intensity and focus at summer festivals is where students make quantum leaps in their progress. During the school year a million things are pulling at your time."
Humble origins
The festival, now in its 12th year, was started as a small affair and has been building in talent and numbers. When Rappaport joined on five years ago there were 90 students and 14 concerts. The year before he arrived there were roughly 30 students and five or six concerts.
"The last two years we had 125 students," Rappaport said. "The whole idea is to continue to build and build and at the same time not lose focus of what our mission is all about."
This year there are 150 students, and the festival will focus mostly on 20th-century composers and their works.
"Ninety percent of the music is less than 100 years old," Stelluto said. "There's so many varied styles of music that's been explored in the 20th century and it's not just all weird stuff.
"We have a set of songs, for violin, flute, soprano and hand drums. It's a neat combination. It's all very beautiful, enjoyable to listen to. It's based in Brazilian or Portuguese melodies, it's folk influenced. That's what is exciting about the last 100 years, composers and artists explored everything. When you say '20th century,' people say, 'Oh, it's going to be atonal and not fun to listen to,' and that's totally not the case."
Musicians will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Mahler's "Symphony No. 5," which premiered in 1904. The concert series begins with Bach, whose music Mahler looked to for inspiration.
"There's so much perspective to gain on how generations of composers learn from each other," Stelluto said. "You can program themed festivals, but I like to see how these things can grow organically.
"You want some major repertoire that the students are going to get exposed to and a nice variety that the audience gets to hear."
Organizers are aware that the low cost of admission might draw audiences new to classical music. Rappaport, whose life took a turn when his aunt took him to his first classical music concert, is hoping that the festival will inspire others to come out to experience the music.
With orchestras folding -- even the New York Philharmonic is struggling to sell season tickets -- and public perception being that classical music is losing an audience, it couldn't be a more critical time for new audiences.
More competition
The perception of classical music dwindling in popularity is not something international virtuoso and former prodigy Hahn really cares to hear. Her schedule performing with top orchestras keeps her plenty busy during the season.
"It's a bit sensational," said Hahn, 24, who was vacationing with a friend on the West Coast. "It comes out of organizations having trouble and it's very real. But I don't see that's the reason they're having trouble.
"I see people of all ages coming to concerts. I don't really believe in what they say about classical music dying. I see it just taking on a new direction.
"Back in the heyday, it was more like pop music. There weren't so many concerts ... After awhile classical musicians were like superstars. There were concert recitals and every little town had an orchestra.
"Now there are so many different styles of music to listen today. Nowadays you can listen to anything you want: world music, R&B, jazz and hip-hop. Classical music is the most historic of all -- except for world music.
Overall, Hahn said, "I think it's very much alive. At concerts where people are more my age, 20s and 30s, it's almost like an underground movement. It's changing. The way it's being perceived is changing.
"There are new music festivals forming all the time -- they're doing really well."
Rich experience
At the Las Vegas Music Festival, students are housed in dorms at UNLV, receive individual lessons and master classes, and attend seminars on performance anxiety and various instruments. This year there are roughly 80 master classes and 150 rehearsals. Additionally, the get to hone their skills before an audience.
"It's such a rich experience," Stelluto said. "Sadly, people in town don't know about it. Our reputation nationally is larger than our reputation locally."
Gregory Smith, clarinetist from the Chicago Symphony, first attended the festival last year when he was being invited as a soloist to play Gerald Finzi's "Concerto for Clarinet." He's returning this year. In fact, he took an unpaid week's vacation to attend.
"Most of the other festivals are playing festivals and don't have a young artists' program," Smith said. "Just after that experience it was really clear to me it was a festival I wanted to be associated with."
Smith will teach master classes on orchestral and solo repertoire and give one private lesson to each of the eight clarinet students.
He's a strong advocate of educational festivals.
"They learn to take seriously for the first time how important it is to learn orchestral music, investment in the fundamentals they don't get in schools and conservatories around the country," Smith said. "Learning string orchestra repertoire is not something to be taken lightly.
"There are about 30 orchestras in the United States where you can make a living in that orchestra ... The ones who will eventually make it don't sit home and practice. They go out and hone their skills."
For the professionals who get a chance to fraternize and the students who have an opportunity to learn, the experience for a musician, Smith said, is "icing on the cake."
"There's an excitement in the air when there's a festival. It's like so little time, so much music, so much fun. People are there to learn and they're usually excellent musicians."
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