DAN'S PAPERS, July 24, 2009 Page 40 www.danshamptons.com
Anniversary
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the people of Sagaponack, well SOME people in Sagaponack, said they didn’t want it. At some hearing I remember someone said the music might be too loud. There might be trumpets and kettle drums.” She shook her head from side to side in disbelief just at the thought of this. “Dan’s Papers was all for it,” I said. “People complain about everything. I recall once years earlier some tourists near the ocean complaining to the authorities that the roaring of the ocean was too loud. It was at an Inn somewhere. Hard to believe what people complain about.” “In this case,” Toby continued, “it just didn’t happen. But there was such an uproar about it and so much publicity about it that Steven Spielberg called me and got some of his friends involved, Alberto Vilar, David Geffen and Lauder, and they went and bought this place. It was ready made for us. Indeed it is perfect for us. I am so glad we came here. It was just one of those lucky things that happens.” “What did Itzhak think of all this?” I asked. “He was all for it, if I was for it. Our kids were grown. It was a big project, but he knew I was big enough to tackle it if that is what I wanted to do.” “Was he involved in it?” “Not at first. You know, he is very involved with Juilliard. But I put this program together in a matter of weeks, and, of course, I came to the fact there would be an orchestra. I said, ‘Why don’t you conduct the orchestra?’ And he said he wasn’t a conductor, he was a violinist, and I reminded him he took conducting classes in school. So he did conduct, but at first with just a pencil. He
wouldn’t touch a baton. He was just trying out being a conductor. But then he kind of got sucked into it and came to love it. You know, I think he plays better now than he ever played. The students challenge him. It is truly amazing.” Toby described the curriculum of the Perlman Music Program. It is in two parts. During the month of July, it’s a summer music camp for students 12 to 18. There are 38 openings in the camp program. And when a student is accepted, he comes back to the camp every year until he is 18. “So if we accept him at the age of 12, he is here for six summers. It’s a very intense program, a very intense curriculum. Mostly it is one-on-one, and the program gets tailored to the student.” Every Friday and Saturday night the students have concerts. There is no competition. The students actually rotate who is first violin or second or third. Each concert you see different students as first violin. They start out the first concert tallest to shortest. It’s a democracy. “With students here every summer, there are really only a few openings that come up. This past winter, we had two openings for violinists and one opening for cello. We had about 150 applicants.” The students practice six hours a day, six days a week. They eat breakfast lunch and dinner together. There are strict rules about certain things — smoking for instance, or when they can go walk to Tuck’s for Ice Cream. The kids are there to learn. The second half of the summer, August, is the month long Chamber Music Workshop for musi-
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cians 18 to 30. This summer there are 42 students in that program. And again, once in, you come back year after year. “We have two big concerts in towns nearby at the end of each summer,” Toby said. “This year, we have our first in Greenport, at the high school there, then we are having one at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in East Hampton.” Toby pointed out that running such a small summer camp probably makes this the least cost effective camp ever. Much money has to be raised. She mentioned some of the camp’s biggest donors, who include Ian and Annette Cumming, and Morgan and Sidney Stires-Stark. There are many, many others. In the off-season, there are concerts for the school at the Neue Gallery and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. There is a wine auction and concert at per se, in the Time Warner Building, with wines selected by Fritz Hatton and Michael Troise. There are offices for the camp at 69th Street and Central Park West, not far from the Perlmans’ Manhattan residence. And in the winter, in Florida, there is a two-week program in Sarasota over Christmas vacation for the students at another former children’s camp, and many of the students go there when their schools go on holiday break as a kind of reunion. There is also an annual winter concert performed at the home of James H. Clark in West Palm Beach to raise funds. “Many of our former students, our alumni, come back to camp here either to teach or be counselors or just to mentor younger students.” She paused.
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