Those attending Vivaldi’s wildly popular The Four Seasons at the Oregon Bach Festival, will experience an evocative piece of pastoral music, with singing birds, murmuring streams, drunken country dancers, and more. The sold-out audience will witness four distinct concertos, based on sonnets, and depicting the four seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
Each concerto will feature a violin soloist, all former Berwick Academy (BA) musicians.
- Spring: Pauline Kempf
- Summer: Alice Culin- Ellison
- Autumn: Shelby Yamin
- Winter: Keats Dieffenbach
Parisian violinist, Pauline Kempf, attended Berwick in 2019. “I don’t want to sound like I’m speaking in hyperboles, but it truly was my best festival experience!” Pauline said about the Oregon Bach Festival’s Berwick Academy. “The atmosphere was so gentle and friendly, and I had a really tremendous time.”
Pauline Kempf photographed by Carlin Ma
That friendly atmosphere inspired community, and Pauline left Eugene with connections that later materialized into her string band, Ensemble Affect. “At Berwick Academy, everybody is nice, and the coaches all have good relationships with each other,” Pauline shared. “Perhaps, that encourages the students just have that willingness to start a thing of their own!”
A violinist since the age of five, Pauline fell in love with baroque violin while studying for her bachelor’s degree in Switzerland under Florence Malgloire. After graduating with her Master of Music in Austria, Pauline flew across the Atlantic to Northwestern for her DMA in violin performance. She went on to the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where she continued her studies into the baroque violin with Elizabeth Blumenstock.
Now residing in San Mateo, California, Pauline is thrilled to travel back to the Beaver State for the Oregon Bach Festival. “I keep an idyllic memory of my week with the Berwick Academy so I’m really looking forward to going back!” she said.
Alice Culin- Ellison will also travel back to Eugene for the first time since she was accepted into BA for its inaugural year in 2015. "It was really cool to see the Academy at its inception,” Alice recalled. Auditioning for Berwick Academy was a natural choice for Alice, as she is fascinated with historical performance. Berwick is one of a handful of educational opportunities in the U.S. to exclusively feature period performance, where musicians play on period instruments and in the style of the time during which the music was originally performed.
Alice Culin- Ellison photographed by Nerissa Sparkman
After graduating with her bachelor’s from the University of Michigan, she obtained her master’s degree in historical performance under Stanley Ritchie at Indiana University. She later studied under Julie Andrijeski while at Case Western Reserve University for her doctorate in historical performance.
Currently, Alice resides in Louisville, Kentucky and is a co-founder of Incantare | An Ensemble of Violins and Sackbuts. Performing predominantly as a concertmaster or within ensemble sections, playing Vivaldi’s orchestral work will be a “wonderful challenge” for Alice. "It's been fun to prepare,” she said. “I am playing a turtle dove, cuckoo, finch, and a storm. I am excited to hop out of my little bubble of just my part and finally put it together with the rest of the group.”
“Autumn” soloist Shelby Yamin attended BA twice, once in 2018 and again as guest concertmaster in 2019. “It's a huge honor to be asked to come back to Oregon Bach Festival,” Shelby said. “It is such a great community to be a part of.”
Shelby Yamin photographed by Lin Kerbs
A Rockland County, New York native, Shelby started playing violin at two years old. She graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in 2012, and she was first introduced to baroque violin by Elizabeth Blumenstock while studying for her master’s at San Francisco Conservatory (SFC). “It was like a switch was flipped!” Shelby recalled. “When I took her class, heard her play, and heard her talking about the approach, it was something I was not getting from any of my other gigs or any of my other work that I was pursuing.” Shelby stayed at SFC for an extra year to receive a professional studies degree in historical performance and went on to graduate with her second master’s from The Julliard School.
Shelby, too, left Berwick with connections which later developed into an opportunity to start an online web series with her BA coach, Debra Nagy. Launched during the pandemic, SalonEra is in its fourth season, Shelby as the associate producer. “Artistically and personally, it's a very exciting thing that I get to do,” she said. She also performs regularly with Debra in her Cleveland-based group, Les Délices.
Shelby is heading back to Eugene this week, and as a The Four Seasons soloist, she is thrilled to demonstrate the versatility of the violin. “You’re literally using it to depict stomping on ice, a deer getting shot and killed, and people being drunk,” she said. “It goes so far beyond just putting your fingers on the string. It is a real honor to just be able to stand up there and make music with the phenomenal musicians I will share the stage with.”
Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons concludes with Keats Dieffenbach taking the stage for the "Winter" violin solo. Originally from Wilmington, North Carolina, Keats (they/any) has three degrees from Juilliard, the most recent being a historical performance program degree as a baroque violin student of Cynthia Roberts and Elizabeth Blumenstock.
Keats Dieffenbach photographed by Lauren Desberg
They attended BA during summer 2022. "It was thrilling!” Keats said. “It was stimulating to collaborate with the amazing faculty, and to meet other people who are immersed in early music. Especially as somebody who came to early music a little later in life, the Berwick summer festival experience was a meaningful and formative experience in terms of building relationships with other musicians who are exploring similar things.”
Returning one year later, Keats is eager to collaborate on “Winter” with their colleagues. "I am excited to come back, see everybody, re-enliven all of those BA relationships, and play this program together,” they said. “This is an accomplished and respected early music community at OBF, and to get to be a part of that is really special.”
Three more former BA participants are taking the stage for Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Aaron Goler, Elana Cooper, and Toma Iliev will play in the orchestra. The piece will be performed on July 6 in Beall Concert Hall.