by Beth Riner, Messenger Staff Writer

Talented young musicians from across the world will gather on the Mountain from June 17 to July 16 for the 66th season of the Sewanee Summer Music Festival.

During this time, the festival will host more than 30 performances of symphonic, chamber, and vocal music, including Aria Showcases, Symphony Orchestra Concerts, a special Opera Scenes Program, the Jacqueline Avent Concerto Competition, and an Artist-Faculty Chamber Concert Series.

“It’s a pretty transformative experience for a younger person,” said John Kilkenny, executive director of the festival as well as the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera. Kilkenny was actually one of those young musicians when he came to the festival as a student percussionist in 1993. Kilkenny returned in 2010 as a faculty member before assuming directorship in 2018.

“It’s nice to see young people have the kind of experience I had at a formative stage of my life,” he said. “It’s nice to be able to give back to the next generation.”

More than 200 participants were selected for the prestigious festival, which is one of the largest of its kind in the country. Students live on campus during the four weeks and attend full-day lessons, coaching sessions, masterclasses, and rehearsals in specialized areas: instrumental, composition, and opera.

A student in opera might work on vocal coaching, diction, and movement while someone in composing focuses on writing for instrumental groups or scoring films, Kilkenny said. Ages of the students range from 13 to mid-20s.

Something unique to the festival is the addition of Life Coach Eva Cappelletti Chao, an accomplished violinist of more than 30 years who is also a certified life coach for musicians and has worked with hundreds of clients.

“My undergraduate degree was in music and psychology, so I’ve always been interested in the mind,” she said, “and I’ve learned all the way through my career that to be a classical musician is very challenging. It’s not easy to get a job in it even if you love it, and there’s a lot of pressure for musicians. If we don’t have resources for ourselves, our internal world can get very uncomfortable.”

Cappelletti Chao first joined the Sewanee Summer Music Festival (SSMF) pre-pandemic in 2019 as a member of the violin faculty. When the festival had to shift online during the pandemic, she suggested to Kilkenny that she provide life coaching sessions to share tools that she and her clients had found helpful.

“That first week those classes were filled, and they asked for more,” she said. “It was clear right from the beginning that it was very wanted and not a part of our training in our discipline. We have a lot of training around playing well—the outer part of our world—but we do not get much support with what’s happening in our inner world while performing on the stage.”

By the time the festival returned to in-person learning in 2022, Cappelletti Chao was officially named the Musicians’ Life and Career Coach in Residence.

“That happens nowhere else that I know of,” she said. “It’s very unusual what we have here at SSMF.”

During the four-week festival, she spends 15 hours a week one-on-one with musicians who come to her with whatever they’re struggling with musically or other things that are getting in the way of living the lives they’d like to lead. She also offers two group coaching sessions and leads morning musical meditations.

Students often struggle with anxiety, stage fright, imposter syndrome, motivation, and self-doubt.

“One thing that I get out of being a life coach for young musicians is that they won’t have to suffer like I did,” she explained. “I can offer them skills and tools that they can use as easily as learning to read music. It helps them.”

She also believes that Sewanee’s unique setting contributes greatly to the training experience of the young musicians.

“We can all be full of ourselves practicing and trying to win these competitions, but there’s something quite humbling and human about Sewanee—about the mountains and the waters and the beautiful sunsets. Being in Sewanee reminds me of my place in this world,” she said.

Season tickets cost $150, although nearly half of the concerts are free. To reserve tickets to one or more of the performances or to purchase a season subscription, go to <https://ssmf.sewanee.edu/tickets/;.