Ravinia 2024 Issue 2

Ravinia Festival audiences July 10 will get their first chance to witness the Cuban native in action when Altarriba joins Alsop, Ravinia’s Chief Conductor, in leading the National Seminario Ra- vinia Orchestra and National Orchestral Institute + Festival (NOI+F) Orchestra. Alsop believes it is a much-deserved opportunity for the up-and-comer. “Jessica has worked incredibly hard,” the veteran conductor said via email. “She never takes any situation for grant- ed. She is a kind and helpful colleague, is smart and hugely motivated, and always puts the composer first. These are qualities that help develop true artists, and I have every expectation that Jessica will have a wonderful career and make important contributions to our field.” Last summer, Ravinia teamed with the Chicago Philharmonic to present the first-ever National Seminario. It brought together 130 students from 23 programs across the United States and Canada inspired by El Sistema, an innovative music-education initiative that originated in Venezuela. One of the largest American programs is Sistema Ravinia, which operates under the auspices of Ravinia’s Reach Teach Play, a multifaceted portfolio of education and community engagement offerings. In its 11th year, the Sistema Ravinia serves 250 primarily Black and Latino elementa- ry- and middle-school children around Waukegan and the Austin and Lawndale neighborhoods of Chicago. For this second National Seminario, another group of 130 students, repre- sentatives of now 43 programs across North America as well as from Sweden and Greece, will gather July 7–10 under the tutelage of Altarriba and Alsop—a mentee working with her mentor to in turn mentor a new generation of musicians. The young participants will participate in intensive orchestral train- ing and present a culminating concert on the Pavilion stage wide-by-side with musicians from the NOI+F. Alsop has served as music director of the summer pre-professional training program based at the University of Maryland in College Park since 2020. Altarriba got her first inkling of this opportunity when Alsop asked her at the beginning of this year’s spring semester at Peabody what she was doing this sum- mer, and she relayed that she had nothing booked. “I’m not like Marin, who has her entire life planned for the next five years,” she quipped. The veteran said she might have something for her mentee, and only later Altarriba did find out it would be working alongside Alsop at Ravinia. “At that moment, I was beyond words, because Ravinia is a really important festival in the United States,” she said. “To have a chance to be part of it is a pleasure and a privilege.” Considering she is not yet 30 and is barely six years removed from receiving her bachelor’s degree, Altarriba is still wrapping her head around the idea of shifting from student into the role of pedagogue. “Sometimes the speed of your profession, you cannot calculate,” she said. “I’m honestly wondering how I’m going to end up mentoring when I’m being mentored.” But she plans to not “overthink” this new role. “I’m just going to try to be honest and try to share with them what I have learned and the positive impact that music has had during my life,” she said. Cuba has an intensive music-educa- tion system based on that of the Soviet Union, which played a major role in the island country from 1959 through the collapse of that regime in 1991. Altarriba began studying flute and piano when she was 7, never giving any thought to conducting until she saw a female conductor, Cosette Justo Valdés, leading a rehearsal of Sergei Prokofiev’s narrated children’s work Peter and the Wolf at the Esteban Salas Conservatory in Santiago de Cuba, where she was studying when she was 18. “I was really amazed because I had never seen a female doing that,” she said. “In Cuba, we are pretty tradi- tional, so we only have male conductors.” During the encounter, she sensed an immediate connection to conducting and saw the orchestra as a place that provides freedom for musical explora- tion—feelings she never had as a pianist or flutist. Afterward, she approached Valdés, now Resident Conductor of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra in Canada, who agreed to give her conducting lessons. In addition, the conductor helped her gain admission to the University of the Arts in Havana, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in conducting. As the first Colton Fellow of the New Jersey Symphony, Jessica Altarriba worked closely with another barrier- breaking conductor, Xian Zhang, as well as the New Jersey Symphony Youth Orchestra. “WHEN YOU WORK WITH A YOUTH ORCHESTRA, YOU ARE GIVING THEM EVERYTHING YOU HAVE, BUT YOU ARE RECEIVING EVEN MORE, THIS SENSE OF THE SIMPLE LIFE– ‘I DO WHAT I LOVE.’ ” RAVINIA.ORG  • RAVINIAMAGAZINE 15 PHOTOCOURTESYOFTHEARTIST