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Festival harmonizes with
Florida island vibe |
By Patricia Borns
Globe Correspondent / May 18, 2008 |
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FERNANDINA BEACH, Amelia Island, Fla. - On a typical May
afternoon downtown, three girls peer through plate glass
windows as fudge is paddled on a marble slab. My fiancé
and I watch from a sidewalk table, our hair damp from
body surfing, our ice cream cones melting in the sun. |
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"Boomer!" the girls squeal as a white Percheron draft
horse draws a white carriage along Centre Street, and a
white-aproned restaurateur appears with a carrot in his
outstretched hand. |
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Few people have heard of this town of 11,000, though the
island on which it resides is well known. But it is the
town - with its streetscapes of eclectic Victoriana and
residents who set out water dishes for visiting dogs -
that draws the brightest stars of chamber music to
perform each year. |
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"I was at my shop when a man came in to buy furniture,"
Eileen Moore, owner of Eileen's Art & Antiques, recalls
of her first meeting with Christopher Rex, principal
cellist of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Rex, who
vacations in the area, said he wanted to bring chamber
music to the island. |
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That was enough to rouse Moore and other local women to
action, and the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival
opened in 2002 against a backdrop of shrimp trawlers and
yacht masts on the waterfront lawn.
Scheduled this year for May 30-June 15, the series under
Rex's direction plays in intimate indoor and outdoor
spaces ranging from a Civil War fort to a ballroom at
the Ritz-Carlton. Inside a white-domed county courthouse
where William Jennings Bryan delivered a campaign
speech, we sat in the jury box while the venerable
Guarneri Quartet played beneath the judge's bench.
"What makes the festival special is its home-grown
quality. Even the lack of a conventional concert hall
has been turned into a plus," says Michael Tree, the
quartet's violist.
On another evening last year college students and the
pungent scent of beer wafted through the swinging doors
of the Palace, Florida's oldest saloon, while through
another set of doors, concertgoers filled a back room.
The event mischievously titled "Beer and G-strings" was
carried off with an ingenuity that earns Rex praise from
fellow musicians. He might pair Antonio Vivaldi's "Four
Seasons" with the "Four Seasons" of Argentine tango
composer Ástor Piazzolla - complete with dancers. Before
they retire next year, the Guarneri String Quartet will
perform this season at St. Peter's Episcopal Church.
Whether they have come to listen or to play, visitors
feel welcomed into a close-knit community. "It's so
pleasurable because people interact with one another,"
says Ann Moore, who with her husband, Tom, travels from
central Florida in a well-appointed Airstream to attend
the festival. The couple stays at Fort Clinch State
Park, where candlelight concerts are sometimes held in
the historic barracks. The park's pristine quartz sand
beach and forested trails together with Egans Creek
Greenway, a home to gators and great blue herons, are
minutes from downtown.
Like the Berkshires of yesteryear when actors and
theatergoers mingled at the Williamstown Ho-Jo's,
opportunities to hobnob with the chamber equivalents of
the Rolling Stones come easily. "Everybody's welcome to
join us at . . ." is a common post-concert invitation.
One night, the crowd segued to the Bonito Grill for
sake. Another time it might be the Green Turtle, a local
contractors' hangout, for a brew. On and off Centre
Street, tucked-away bistros strung with festive lights
serve a surprising variety of cuisines.
At Fairbanks House, a regal bed-and-breakfast set in an
acre of gardens, Lynn Harrell descends the stairs with a
1673 Antonio Stradivarius cello on one shoulder and his
golf clubs on the other. The area's golf courses,
including the Golf Club of Amelia Island where Harrell
takes lessons with renowned instructor Anne Cain, are
the best in northeast Florida according to local Tommy
Purvis, who plays them all.
Happiness for us non-golfers is hiking on a nine-hole
Donald Ross course that's slowly reverting to nature on
Fort George Island. The state park and Cumberland Island
National Seashore sit like bookends south and north of
Fernandina - extraordinary places evoking the pathos of
north Florida's plantation and recreation years. On an
EcoMotion tour of Fort George ($85 a person), visitors
can ride cross-terrain Segways as Maren and Greg Arnett
peel away layers of civilization: Timucuan middens, the
great house and slave huts of Sea Island cotton planter
Zephaniah Kingsley, a mansion of Napoleon Bonaparte
Broward, governor from 1905-09, and the Ribault Club,
established in 1928 as a playground for the affluent.
Departing from Fernandina Harbor Marina, the Greyfield
Inn's private ferry ($95 a person) brings a limited
number of day trippers to Cumberland Island, where the
mansion built by Thomas Carnegie's widow, Lucy, rises
above grandly gesticulating oaks. Provisioned with box
lunches and a barn-full of bikes, we were given the run
of the place to read, ramble, or picnic beside
Dungeness, the colossal ruin of the Carnegies' 59-room
turreted castle. And of course, to gather sand dollars
on the beach stretching emptily for 17 miles.
The music festival traditionally culminates in a gala at
the Ritz. While a five-diamond hotel isn't our usual
venue for a night out, I have to admit that martinis do
taste better at the bar of the Ritz's new restaurant,
Salt. On one evening our dinner table for two looked
onto the kitchen of chef Richard Gras, whose mentors
left Providence's Al Forno to found the Empire
Restaurant there. Between mouthfuls of peekytoe crab,
Hawaiian miro, and Arctic char, I took dictation from
Gras on everything from making heirloom tomato jelly to
rhubarb pillows - because after this bender (eight
entrees, wines, dessert, $220 a person), I would be
cooking at home for many nights to come.
There's a moment in Allan Miller's documentary about the
Guarneri String Quartet, "High Fidelity," when Arnold
Steinhardt, the first violinist, wants to play a quartet
by Fritz Kreisler, the Austrian violinist and composer,
and his fellow members hoot him down. Inviting
Steinhardt to play Kreisler this year is Rex's playful
reference to that moment: a musical insider's joke.
"The camera zooms in on me looking like I'm about to
cry," says Steinhardt of the movie moment.
Steinhardt enjoys spending time on Amelia Island after
the festivals when he can. "My idea of heaven is doing
nothing," he sighs, "just eat, sleep, and swim. It's the
beach bum life for me."
Although Fernandina, like many places, is taking that
life to up-market heights, its chamber music festival is
remarkably democratic. Seats to the priciest
performances cost about a third of more renowned
festivals like Tanglewood. And the miles of sloping
Atlantic beach strewn with olive shells and sharks teeth
are free. |
Patricia Borns can be reached at
patriciaborns@comcast.net. |
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