High school senior Heidi Brantuas was center stage at Petersburg’s Wright Auditorium on May 20 singing “Almen se non poss’io” by Italian composer Vincezzo Bellini. College freshman Eleanor Kandoll accompanied her on piano.
After the piece ended and the crowd’s applause died down, both performers stayed onstage.
The pair were participating in a master class as part of Petersburg’s inaugural Devil’s Thumb Chamber Music Festival, which took place from May 20-23. During the festival’s first event, a handful of brave local performers took the stage, performed a piece, and got immediate feedback from a professional. All in front of an audience.
Artyom Pak was one of the mentors. An accomplished pianist, he works at operas in Florida and New York. He is also a part-time faculty member at Juilliard. He guided the performers through how to improve their work, and how to approach future performances.
It was Pak’s first time teaching a masterclass. He said he wanted to help students understand why they want to make music.
“It is through classical music — it is through music in general — that we make this world a much more beautiful, and hence peaceful, place,” he said in an interview.
Pak was one of two outside musicians brought to Petersburg as part of the three-day festival.
Throughout the week, an exhibit titled “North/South” by percussionist and composer Alexis Lamb was on display at the Petersburg Public Library. The exhibit featured 32 minutes of field recordings taken by Lamb in Southeast Alaska and northeast Ecuador. Overlaid with the audio were interviews with essayist Kathleen Dean Moore and ecologist Gordon Hempton, who spoke about conservation and the natural world.
Lamb also taught a class at Petersburg’s Sandy Beach, teaching community members how to make music using found objects.
Lamb’s performances and classes may not be what people initially think of when they hear the words “classical music.” But, she said that’s the point.
“I would love for people to kind of consider the expansiveness of what can be classified as what some might consider classical music,” she said.
The festival ended with a performance titled “Into the Tongass.” Both Lamb and Pak performed alongside Petersburg local and Devil’s Thumb Chamber founder Stephanie Pfundt.
An award-winning operatic soprano, Pfundt said she brought the festival to Petersburg as a way to give back to the community that supported her musical career from a young age.
The final performance was a mix of old and new songs, with classical composers like Strauss and Beethoven in the first half, and songs from the musical “Into the Woods” in the second half.
Pfundt said she is proud of the festival’s first year.
“I think we did everything we needed to do, and we enriched the people we needed to enrich,” she said.
She said she plans to fundraise and bring the festival back again next year.
Isaiah Bowen-Karlyn contributed to this report.
