The founder of a music festival tells its story. To begin his first job in 1976, a young physician moved to a small woodland community in rural Pennsylvania, learning only later of its history as a Chautauqua. Eager to play his flute again after years of medical education, he called old school friends who had become professional musicians. Together, he and they created Gretna Music in a perfect location. In 1980, Time Magazine called it "one of six of the best" small music festivals in the US. Over Gretna Music's fifty years, 2,100 musicians from six continents have performed over 750 concerts in two open-air venues in the woods: an 1892 auditorium that collapsed under snow in 1994 and then in its acoustically-sublime replacement, a 'Carnegie Hall' in its tiny community. Singing and playing almost all kinds of music from the past millennium, musicians included players and concertmasters from major orchestras and chamber ensembles, jazz legends, Met Opera singers, Grammy and competition winners, MacArthur fellows, prodigies, and promising students. By building a community around it, Gretna Music has proven that the vast ocean of the greatest music ever written on our planet can still move and connect with people in a time when societal changes threaten to displace live music in small venues to the periphery of culture. Praise for the author's Theme and Variations: Musical Notes by a Neurologist (2018) "The most important book on music in years." (History professor) "A void left by the sublime Oliver Sacks has been filled." (Pianist from Juilliard) "The words flow with charm and effortlessness." (Editor, the double reed) Carl Ellenberger studied music at Interlochen and Eastman, medicine at Yale, and practiced and taught neurology at Penn State and Case Western Reserve. He has played music with some of the best musicians on the planet.
