Brigid Ehrmantraut Interns for the Chamber Music Festival

— by Emma Heikkinen, Orcas Issues Summer Intern —

Brigid Ehrmantraut

A concert is more than musicians performing — a great deal of organizational work is required, with a multitude of artists collaborating in order to create the final product. At Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival, Brigid Ehrmantraut is a particularly special cog in the machine as their first intern.

Ehrmantraut’s internship began the summer after her graduation from Orcas Island High School. At first, she was planning on volunteering for them, but her mother — Moana Kutsche, a board member at OICMF — suggested she look into seeing if the organization would appreciate putting together a more cohesive program for Ehrmantraut. “Which is kind of useful, it looks good on resumes … it provides a format for what to do, you’re not just coming in a lot to usher or help cleaning up … there is actually a cohesive plan for the summer,” Ehrmantraut said. Her work in putting together an internship will benefit others in the future: up-and-comer Paris Wilson of “Almost Classical” fame will likely join the program soon.

Ehrmantraut’s work for the organization largely involves running social media: “I have to say getting their social media up to 21st century social media has definitely been a process,” she said. There’s a performance aspect to her position as well; page-turning and house-managing are two other aspects of the internship. Last year, she helped OICMF write a grant to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA); and this year she’s  working on a Chamber Music America (CMA) grant. Both grants generally focused on aspects of local music education and community engagement.”

Her responsibilities differ each summer, but page-turning and technical backstage work are the most fun, she says. As fun as page-turning is, however, the most difficult part of Ehrmantraut’s internship last year was page-turning for the minimalist, surrealist Hallelujah Junction by John Adams, with a score that looks the same for 30 pages.

The internship helps her learn the arts management side of music performance, deepening her knowledge of the art world past her ability to play viola and focus on composition. Ehrmantraut has been playing the viola since 6th grade, and composing since she was about 7 when she started playing piano. She has composed more seriously from high school onwards. Currently, she’s studying Classics and Medieval Studies at Princeton.

The OICMF summer music festival of 2016 takes place through August 20.