INTRODUCING
SPA’S NEW CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS BY LAURA BILLINGS COLEMAN | RENDERINGS COURTESY OF HGA
WHEN IT COMES TO LEARNING A NEW INSTRUMENT, ALMUT ENGELHARDT BELIEVES THE PHRASE “PLAYING MUSIC” CAN BE A LITTLE MISLEADING. “There’s a perception that being a musician is all about fun, and natural talent, being kissed by the muse, and overcome to produce these beautiful sounds all together,” says fine arts faculty member Engelhardt, a violinist who played with the Cologne Symphony Orchestra before moving to the U.S. “But in reality it is so much hard work to make even a single nice sound from your instrument, and then to achieve the kind of synchronicity to play all together without total chaos requires so much practice. It is not just play.”
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A whole generation of students at St. Paul Academy and Summit School have proven they’re up to the challenge, swelling the ranks of the Middle and Upper School orchestras from just 13 players when Engelhardt first started in 1991, to nearly 200 orchestra students at the start of this school year. The sheer numbers forced Engelhardt’s string, brass, percussion and woodwind players on a pilgrimage through chapels and auditoriums across St. Paul, before arriving at O’Shaughnessy Auditorium at St. Catherine University, which has hosted SPA’s student performers for several years. But starting in 2016, Engelhardt will be able to raise her baton without worrying whether the triangle—or the