Pianist learns with her students at 2023 Sarasota Music Festival

Pianist Anne-Marie McDermott doesn’t fully remember her one summer as a fellow at the 1985 Sarasota Music Festival, but she is excited about joining the faculty for the first time.

“I do remember being so honored to be accepted to go there and so excited to be around both colleagues in my age group, where we’re all learning and being with this tremendous faculty,” she said in an interview. “For me to becoming back as a faculty member is a huge honor. Look at the faculty at this festival. It’s pretty mind-boggling.”

A busy concert artist, McDermott serves as artistic director of the Vail Valley Music Festival in Colorado, a six-week program of orchestra and chamber concerts with the New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and Dallas Symphony. She also is artistic director of the Ocean Reef Chamber Music Festival and the Avila Chamber Music Celebration in Curacao.

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That doesn’t leave a lot of time for teaching, but she loves leading master classes and encouraging a “widening sense of curiosity and imagination from the young players,” she said.

“You have to challenge the student, but you can challenge them in a kind, creative way. I want them to walk away having heard a change in their playing, even if it’s just one phrase or section of a movement,” she said. “That can motivate them further once the masterclass is over.”

The festival brings 40 professional musicians to Sarasota over three weeks each June to work with 60 fellows, who are just beginning their careers. In addition to private and group lessons and master classes, the faculty and fellows perform together in weekend concerts.

McDermott will perform Schumann’s Piano Concerto in A Minor during the first orchestral concert at 7:30 p.m. June 10 at the Sarasota Opera House. The concert, led by conductor Yaniv Dinur, includes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 (Pastorale) and excerpts from Felix Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

McDermott said she always learns while listening to students. “There are a million possibilities with how you play a piece of music. There’s not one way. There are always things to talk about,” she said. “One of my obsessions with piano playing is color and having the broadest possible spectrum of colors and dynamics. We, as pianists, always have more exploration to do with the music.”

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Encouraged by a mother who wanted all her kids to try instruments and other experiences, McDermott started on the piano when she was about 5. By the time she was 10 or 11, “I was addicted. I knew this is what I wanted to do with my life.” She now performs on occasion with her sisters, Maureen (cello) and Kerry (violin), as the McDermott Trio.

“Our mother was amazing. She exposed us to a broad array of things, but it was the piano that kind of grabbed my heart. That’s where I felt most comfortable making music.”

She recalls attending a concert as a child and “seeing this big black shiny piano on stage. And the power of the instrument in front of the orchestra, I thought it was the most glamorous thing I'd ever seen. I don’t think it’s glamorous anymore. There is nothing glamorous about a career in music, but I am still attracted to all the tonal possibilities of the piano. It is so complete in itself and so challenging in itself.”

She first learned the Schumann concerto in her late teens and it has come and gone from her repertoire during her career.

“It’s been at least three or four years since I played it and I’m relishing playing it again. It’s an extraordinary piece of music. It’s a very symphonic concerto. It’s not just here’s the piano soloist and there’s the orchestra backing her up. There are lots of chamber elements to it.”

Each time she returns to a piece she hasn’t played in a while, she approaches it as if it’s brand new. ‘I don’t rely on what I used to think about the concerto. I try to approach it as if it’s the first time. The good word is to rediscover. I try to rediscover a piece. We’re human, we evolve and change and our opinions about any piece in the repertoire should go along with that. Those opinions should change over the course of my life.”

Sarasota Music Festival

Sarasota Music Festival runs June June 8-24 in Holley Hall at the Beatrice Friedman Symphony Center, 709 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota, and the Sarasota Opera House, 61 N. Pineapple Ave., Sarasota. 941-953-3434; sarasotaorchestra.org

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Pianist prepared to learn with her Sarasota Music Festival students