APPLETON, WIS. — As graduation presents go, Mike Truesdell might be hard pressed to find a better one.
While on a study abroad program last fall in Amsterdam, Truesdell attended a concert performed by the world-renowned Ensemble Intercontemporain, regarded by many as the world’s premiere contemporary classical ensemble. He left the concert hall awe-struck.
“I remember saying to myself, ‘I want to do that,'” Truesdell recalled.
As fate would have it, this summer he will have an opportunity to do so.
The Lawrence University senior from Verona will return to Europe later this summer as a percussionist with the prestigious Lucerne Festival Academy, in Lucerne, Switzerland. Founded in 2004, the festival academy, an elite “training orchestra” for aspiring professional musicians under the age of 28, is an offshoot of the internationally acclaimed Lucerne Festival.
During its more than 60-year history, the Lucerne Festival has earned a reputation as one of the world’s exclusive musical venues, attracting guest conductors such as Arturo Toscanini, Herbert von Karajan and Paul Sacher as well as orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Vienna Philharmonic.
Musicians are selected from around the world by audition tape. And serving as coaches for this year’s festival academy are members of the same awe-inspiring Ensemble Intercontemporain.
“Elated” best describes Truesdell’s state of mind when he found out he had beaten the odds and was one of 140 musicians worldwide selected for the festival academy, which focuses on the study and performance of groundbreaking compositions from the 20th- and 21st-centuries. One of seven percussionists chosen, Truesdell will spend three, all-expenses-paid weeks in Lucerne, from August 18 to September 6, during which he will study under the tutelage of famed French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez.
Highlighting Truesdell’s stay will be three concert performances in Lucerne in early September followed by an eight-day concert tour that will take him to Essen, Germany and Tokyo, Japan. While in Lucerne, Truesdell will get a crash course in Swiss culture by living with a host family.
“This is such an amazing opportunity. I couldn’t even dream about doing something like this,” said Truesdell, whose specialty is the marimba. “This is going to be a great springboard for things to come musically for me. To work with the renowned conductors and coaches of this festival can only improve me as a musician and as a citizen of the world.”
Professor of Music Dane Richeson, director of percussion studies at Lawrence, isn’t surprised one of the most talented students he’s ever had earned a spot in one of the world’s pre-eminent concert festivals.
“Mike has a rare musical gift for understanding how to make the vast array of percussion instruments, with all the individual techniques they require, communicate true emotion to the listener,” said Richeson, who has taught percussion at Lawrence since 1984. “Sometimes this might only be a simple rhythm on a triangle. Yet, Mike is passionate and determined enough to make something so simple and one dimensional into a language that can sound multi-dimensional.
“Mike’s opportunity to study and perform in Lucerne is a wonderful and well-deserved reward for an exceptional musician,” Richeson added.
It was a friend of Truesdell’s from the Boston Conservatory who accompanied him to that Amsterdam concert and first told him about the Lucerne Festival Academy, encouraging him to audition for it. Inspired by what he had just witnessed on stage, he recorded the festival’s required repertoire last November and December in Amsterdam, crossed his fingers and sent it off.
“It was absolutely the most difficult piece of music I had ever seen in my life,” said Truesdell, who earned first-place honors at the 2006 Wisconsin Public Radio-sponsored Neale-Silva Young Artists competition.
A member of the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra (LSO) the past four years, Truesdell received his musical baptism on the violin at the age of four and took up piano in middle school. His percussion evolution continued with a stint with bells, from which he “graduated” to snare drum. He dabbled with marimba throughout high school and now considers keyboard percussion his primary instruments of choice. In addition to playing with the LSO, Truesdell also performs with Vale Todo, an Appleton-based salsa band steeped in traditional Cuban music.
With dreams of pursuing a career in contemporary music and eventually commissioning pieces himself, Truesdell is confident the Lucerne Festival Academy will provide him a “fantastic foot in the door of that world.”
“We only have solo repertoire for percussion from the past 50 years or so, while piano has repertoire from the 17th century,” said Truesdell, whose personal marimba back home takes up half of his bedroom. “I want to support new music as much as I possibly can.”
As he wraps up the final weeks of his life as an undergraduate and awaits his college graduation as a percussion performance major on June 10, Truesdell says he’s looking forward to discovering the impact this festival academy will have on his life.
“I had such an amazing experience my last time in Europe and came back such a different person, that I can only image the potential for change in store for me this time. Working with the caliber of musicians I will be exposed to, it’s anyone’s guess how great this will be.”
Middle and high school students near Truesdell’s hometown will be the immediate beneficiaries of his experiences in Lucerne. When he returns to Wisconsin this fall, Truesdell plans on teaching private music lessons for a year before pursuing graduate school studies.
