by Carlene Phillips ·
Friday, April 10, 2026
The week of June 21 will see the ninth year that Fivesparks has sponsored the Chamber Music Festival in Harvard, and this year a new addition will be a cello seminar, with up to eight young cellists.
Rhonda Rider, a cello teacher who has been with the festival since its inception, held a cello seminar in rural New York every summer for almost 30 years. She moved from Boston to Harvard last October and said it seemed sensible to move the seminar from New York to here. “It’s quite exciting to combine the chamber music workshop and cello seminar,” said Rider. “Both share a unique emphasis on chamber music performance as storytelling.”
For a week, both groups of musicians, all of whom are students and recent graduates planning careers in music, will rehearse in different ensembles and join together for master classes held around town. Venues include the Congregational Church, Volunteers Hall, and the Unitarian Church’s Fellowship Building, where they will also have meals. They may also play live music in pop-up places where people aren’t expecting it. At the end of the week, each group will have its own concert in the Unitarian Universalist Church, presenting the pieces they have been working on throughout the week. “Coming to Harvard for a week of intensive coaching brings these musicians back to why they love music in the first place,” Rider said.
Residents have come to look forward to the festival and, said Rider, “the support from the community has been extraordinary.” Residents are invited to visit the different sites to watch rehearsals and interact with the players and their music. It’s a perfect opportunity for people who know nothing about the process to learn about music and for knowledgeable music lovers to see things from behind the scenes. The young people have bed and breakfast with host families, and Fivesparks board member Willie Wickman and her team take care of everything else for them. “It’s a special event for the young musicians,” said Rider, “and they feel part of the community.”
Lucy Wallace has been hosting since the festival’s first year and wrote, “I have found it to be an incredibly enriching experience for me—especially if they are foreign students studying here in Boston. I’ve loved meeting the students who have stayed here; they are always so gracious, appreciative, and, on occasion, have given me a private preview of the piece they are working on!” Maria Day said every year she has thoroughly enjoyed hosting groups of students from different parts of the U.S. and the world and having conversations about different cultures. “During the week I very much enjoy following the progress of their chosen pieces during master classes and practices.”
In a recent conversation, Rider talked about her love of the cello. Both her parents were violinists and played in a quartet. In fourth grade she joined a school program, playing a cello appropriate to her size. Now, her cello is seven-eighths of a full size, which makes it easier to get around it, she said. She explained that through time, the cello has varied in size, depending on what is popular at the time.
Rider’s instrument was made in 1760 and she sees herself as a caretaker. It’s interesting playing an old instrument, she said, and added that sometimes when she is playing a classic, she imagines Beethoven’s presence and herself asking him, “How do you like my interpretation of your piece?”
She talked about the versatility of the cello, saying that while other instruments have a single range—the violin plays soprano, the bass plays bass—the cello has an “incredible range,” with all four voices.
During the Harvard cello seminar, the students will be playing lots of contemporary music, from solos to octets. “We need to keep music relevant,” said Rider. “Today composers have such a variety of inspirations, which wasn’t true for the old composers like Brahms.” She mentioned Kaija Saariaho, a contemporary Finnish composer who has a composition of five movements, where each one creates a different image of snow. In the avant-garde composer Michael Begay’s “Spring,” four cellos make sounds that you would not usually expect—sounds of thunder, flowers coming up, bird songs.
During the festival week, the students engage in score study, which Rider described as learning a composer’s language. “It’s like cooking,” said Rider. For some composers the language is like a detailed recipe, with exact instructions. For others, it’s more suggestive, a sprinkle of this here or more salt there. Rider later wrote, “Score study is where we see how the roles interact and decide how we want to portray each character to best support what the music is about.”
In addition to Rider, other coaches of the chamber music groups are violinist Judith Eissenberg, a former Harvard resident who founded the festival; Judy Gordon, a pianist, who was also one of the original coaches and will be returning from New Mexico; and professional cellist David Russell. The coaches, all of whom know each other from the Boston Conservatory, will play together at the start of the festival. They love playing together, said Rider, and their performance will set aspirations for what the young musicians can accomplish over the festival week.
With the addition of the cello seminar, more host families are needed. Those interested may contact Willie Wickman at wickmanwillie@gmail.com.