Now in its 21^st season, the Buzzards Bay Musicfest returned to Tabor Academy in Marion this past week, bringing with it exceptional selections expanding all the way from Mozart to Sinatra.

The five-day long festival spanned from July 12-16 and featured two orchestra concerts, two chamber music concerts, and a special salute to the Big Band Era.

This year’s guest conductor was Catherine Larsen-Maguire, a long-time professional bassoonist and conductor based in Berlin. The festival also featured Phil Sanborn, director of the Tri-County Symphonic Band, director of instrumental music at Tabor Academy, and bandleader of the “Buzzards Bay Musicfest Swing Band.”

The musicians are friends and colleagues of BBMF’s Artistic Director and Concertmaster Charles Stegeman, and they travel from all over the world to participate in the festival. Many of these incredible musicians perform professionally with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra and teach at a variety of reputable institutions. “Some of the best musicians in the world are here to perform,” said Stegeman in the festival’s program book, “and I invite you to sit back and enjoy!”

For me, a music major at Boston University, it was incredible to witness the collaboration of all these artists and hear the stunning performances that they produced. I was able to attend the Thursday night chamber music concert as well as the “BBMF Swing Band” Salute on Friday evening. Chamber music concerts, such as the Thursday and Saturday concerts of the festival, feature musical selections performed by a small ensemble, typically with one instrumentalist per part. Thursday’s concert featured Gounod’s Petite Symphonie, Bax’s Quintet for Strings and Oboe, Barber’s well-known Adagio for Strings, and finally a chamber arrangement of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36.

I found the Bax to be the standout performance of the evening. Oboe soloist Gordon Hunt stunned the audience with his wonderfully warm, rich tone and brilliant technique. The strings – Rachel Stegeman on violin, Eric Tanner on violin, Michael Strauss on viola, and Claudio Jaffe on cello – provided support when needed, but had their moments to shine throughout the piece as well. Everything was well balanced and had an excellent sense of musical direction.

Friday’s “BBMF Swing Band” Salute under the leadership of Phil Sanborn, while more light-hearted and casual than the previous night’s concert, (where else other than a jazz concert are you allowed to applaud a soloist in the middle of a piece?), was just as exciting and engaging. The band guided the audience on a journey though the greats of the Big Band Era, featuring tunes from Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, Frank Sinatra, and Glenn Miller.

The concert included some excellent solo and improvisational playing as well as balanced and blended ensemble work.

“We love to play, and this is a whole bunch of fun for us!” said Sanborn. By the tapping feet and dancing in their seats, it was a ‘whole bunch of fun’ for the audience as well.

The Buzzards Bay Musicfest and its board are dedicated to bringing high-quality classical and jazz performances to the South Coast without charge.

“It’s just terrific,” said Lewis Lipsitt of Marion, who has been attending the festival with his wife Edna since its inception. “And it’s such an honor for the town to have such talent available free of charge so that people who don’t have much money can come and enjoy ‘Class-A’ music.”

The Buzzards Bay Musicfest is certainly one of the best festivals of its kind in the area, bringing to the community delightful and memorable performances for the past twenty-one years.

Years of ‘Class-A’ Music

By Ashley Perry

The wood duck is a cousin of the Asian Mandarin duck with an inherited oriental and iridescent plumage, red eyes, and a distinctive white flare down the neck. The less colorful female has a whitish throat, but with a crested head like the male.

Color in nature is not just a means of concealment. Most male birds benefit by brighter plumage than their mates, perhaps to put on a show to impress them at the time of courting.

They both have crested heads and are classified as perching ducks with sharp claws for climbing and perching on trees. They usually nest high up in a hollow opening of a tree 20 feet or more, to discourage predators from getting from seven to twenty-five eggs that only incubate for about thirty days.

Amazingly enough, a day or two after hatching, the mother calls to them to climb to the edge of the nest entrance and jump to the ground, preferably over water to soften the impact of landing since they are unable to fly yet. The mother does not help them in any way, and they already know how to swim and look for food.

They feed by dabbling and walking on land and mainly eat berries, acorns, seeds, and insects, making them omnivores. In temperate regions, they may nest more than once in a season before migrating south for the winter.

The population was in serious decline in the late 19^th century due to habitat loss and market hunting for meat and plumage for the ladies hat market in Europe. Next to the mallard, the wood duck was and still is the most hunted duck in America.

After the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, numbers began to recover slowly by ending unregulated hunting and implementing measures to protect remaining habitats. The development of the artificial nesting box gave a big additional boost to convenient production. Also, the return of the beaver population with their industrious work ethic building dams and creating wooded swamps, ponds, and widening streams, greatly increased the wood duck’s feeding and nesting habitat.

Often the nesting boxes appear to be unused, and a recent tagging study by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows they are more likely to take occupancy in boxes that they pass on their way south, remembering them on the way back.

If you have ever seen the remarkable spectacle of ducklings jumping down from a tree nest a day after hatching in a beaver pond, as in my illustration, it may well be an unforgettable impression as it was for me. And it may be a lasting imprint in the survival of species from predation that makes them more comfortable for them and entertaining for bird watchers.

By George B. Emmons