Katherine Decker, assistant professor of cello and string area coordinator at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, is savoring her role co-leading a prestigious week-long festival celebrating string quartet music.
Decker was called into action last year when a cello coach and mentor needed to abruptly cancel from the workshop associated with the annual chamber music festival at The Clearing Folk School at Ellison Bay in Door County.
Former UWO faculty member Klara Fenyo Bahcall called Decker, though they had never met.
“She trusted my reputation and her desire to include me as a fellow UWO strings professor,” Decker said. “I leaped at the chance to work with her, the other coaches and the amazing adult amateur performers.”
Decker had spent a few previous summers earlier in her career working with the Chapel Hill Chamber Music Festival—a large adult amateur festival. She called it a “life-changing job.”
Celebrating its 50th year, Chamber Music for Strings was first offered at The Clearing in 1970.
The week of intense focus on chamber music for strings includes coached quartet sessions each morning and afternoon with the entire group meeting during the week for several string orchestra sessions. Masterclasses and individual coaching is offered, with a culminating final concert of the week that took place Friday, July 12.
Decker, an avid chamber musician who performs across the world as a member of the contemporary classical mixed quartet, enhake, said she loves working with adults who pursue music as a hobby and as a passion, saying they “are full of joy and have an incredible work ethic.”
Decker said she was contacted by Bahcall, asking if she would be interested in taking over the leadership role this year. She said she was excited for the opportunity and is working with a co-director, UW Oshkosh alumna Jacki Thering ’10, a violinist and Wisconsin-based music educator. Thering majored in instrumental and general music education and violin performance in undergraduate studies at UWO, where she worked with Bahcall and Eli Kalman.
At Chamber Music for Strings, Decker and Thering worked together to coach the quartets and Decker led the string orchestra.
The final concert at the School House on The Clearing property featured 16 musicians performing movements from quartets by Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven and Alexander Borodin. There was a premiere performance of two new Astor Piazzolla tango arrangements by M. Brent Williams in honor of the festival’s 50th year.
Two current UW Oshkosh students studying violin, Giselle Oliva, a senior from Milwaukee, and Isabel Sorebo, a sophomore from Appleton, are among musician coaches and participants. Students are put into a role in which they can perform but also teach and mentor amateur players.
Decker said she plans to expand the festival to include more Wisconsin musicians, more UW Oshkosh students and other college students from around the country. She said the festival should expand and grow so there is a “home” for adult musicians who want to have music-making in their lives.
“It will be a place for young and old musicians to build community together and connect across generations,” she said.
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