By Maurizio Nisita, President
Our 2012 Recital Program at the First united Methodist Church of Naples on April 28 concluded another very good year for the Naples Music Club, now 47-years-old and stronger than ever.
Our scholarship program is undoubtedly the most important activity of the Club, and those who attended our Winners’ Recital surely must have been impressed by the quality of the student performers, which reflected the high quality of the teaching they received. This is all the more astounding because, after all, ours is but a small community, and yet we are able to send our students on to the best music schools in the country.
Excellent press coverage makes it possible to offer you as well a feature story about our Turiel Award winner, NDN Feature on Nathaniel Cornell, who will attend Oberlin in the fall.
This past season also has been very intense with activities for our membership. We had not one but two Members’ Concerts, the first, A Classics Celebration, and the second dedicated to Broadway, Boogie and Blues, where our performers showed the breadth of their interests and capabilities. Both concerts were well received. We’ll have two again next season.
Extremely successful as well was “A Day of Great Music” at the Bower School of Music at FGCU, with our members sitting in on classroom instruction, receiving coaching from the faculty, and attending student performances. If there was one regret, it was that only a limited number of our members could participate – something we will try to correct next year.
We sponsored two wonderful professional concerts – a recital featuring pianist Conrad Tao performing Liszt at the salon of Maestro William Noll and the second with pianist Richard Bosworth performing a memorial recital paying tribute to Laura Fernando at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Naples. Both events were sold out.
Unique activities we call “music a la carte” recitals have been offered the past two years in private homes. These are both fundraisers and events where potential new members can see firsthand how our club supports talented music students as they enjoy performances in small friendly venues not generally available to the public. We held three such events this past year and are planning more next year.
Last but not least, we strengthened our organization with three new directors: Anne McLean, Chris Straton and Thomas Smith. We developed a new software package named Pianissimo, which will greatly facilitate the management of our Scholarship Program. We held two student recitals and supported a number of Outreach programs. Our four small performance groups provided performance opportunities for our approximately 50 adult musicians who are members.
I was elected President in April – too late to claim responsibility for any successes to date, but certainly not too late to remind our readers that many of our substantial achievements were obtained under the leadership of our Past President Jeannette Boucher, whose dedication and commitment stands as an example to all.
