After breakfast on the final Friday of fresh inc, the participants presented their New Venture Challenges. During the first day of the festival, participants were split into groups, and each group had to work up a project proposal for one of the performance venues from the festival.
These presentations are an exciting part of the festival for us because it’s really cool to see our participants start to put the information they’re learning to use!
After a quick break, we had four members of other chamber ensembles join us up on campus for a panel discussion.
We’re very grateful that Ryan Muncy, Doug Perkins, Steven Burns, and Rob Dillon made the trek up to Kenosha to talk to us and then join us for lunch!
Each panel participant talked about the structure of their group, their interactions with composers and their commissioning processes, and projects they’ve worked on. Melissa helped moderate the session, and I’d say it was a huge success and much appreciated by our participants! It was also great to have them join us for lunch after the session so we could continue the conversations a little longer.
After lunch, we had our dress rehearsal for our UWP performance, a couple of composition lessons, and an impromptu salon to play a few more pieces for the group.
Before dinner, our four fresh inc 2.0 participants, participants who returned to the festival for a second year, presented the projects that they’ve been working on as part of their time at the festival. We’re all insanely proud of the work Andrew O’Connor, bass, Dani Simandl, violin, Rachael Claire Eid-Ries, viola, and Alex Cooke, composer, did, and we’re looking forward to seeing these projects grow outside of fresh inc!
After dinner, we had our dress rehearsal for our Constellation Chicago performance, and then we all hit the sack for a busy Saturday!
