Students Trained, Performed and Excelled At Assai!

Millersville University’s music department partnered with the local business Assai Music, LLC this past July to present a host of concerts, public performances and educational opportunities at the inaugural season for both the Assai! Performance Institute and the Assai! International String Festival.

The Assai! Performance Institute, the first event to be held at the brand new Winter Center for Visual and Performing Arts, was a residential summer training program for string music students. Students had the opportunity to train in instrumental skills, performance skills, artistry training workshops and audition skills. Students also had the chance to perform at institute concerts, community recitals and daily master classes with the faculty and guest artists.

Todd Sullivan, artistic director of Assai!, and Phyllis McLaughlin, executive director of Assai!, founded the institute to fill a need for a summer program where students train their individual skills with one-on-one attention from world class artists.

“Students face a battery of auditions and competitions for school orchestra seats, district orchestras, premium youth orchestras and scholarships. The skills they need to succeed are not found by sitting in an orchestra all summer. They need technical and artistic training as soloists, and we aim to give plenty of both to our students,” said Sullivan.

In addition to the Assai! Performance Institute, students had the opportunity to participate in a variety of public concerts held throughout the Lancaster Community as part as the International String Festival. The strings festival was created to share the great performers with the Lancaster public.

Featured series artist and faculty included Austin Hartman, violin, The Boston Strings Quartet, Christopher Collins Lee, violin and Grammy Award winner Mark O’Connor.

“This is a wonderful example of the kind of partnerships the departments of music are working towards developing in the community,” said Dr. Micheal Houlahan, chair of the department of music at Millersville. “It provides the music education students at Millersville University with the opportunity to observe master teachers in action. Young students participating in this festival will eventually become excellent performers and will have the opportunity to continue their professional studies at Millersville.”

For more information, visit www.AssaiFestival.com.