Thursday, May 30, 2013

Round Top Festival Institute

Established in 1971 by pianist James Dick, Round Top Festival Institute is a beautiful wonder just down the road from downtown Round Top. Among the 210-acre campus is an 1,100-seat concert hall of visual and acoustic beauty unrivaled in Texas - truly a work of art!


The two-concert season in 1971 has grown into more than 30 concerts during June and July each year. The August-to-April Series, the International Guitar Festival, the Theatre Forum, The Poetry Forum, and the Herbal Forum bring the total number of year-round events to more than 50.

Students from conservatories and universities in the United States and abroad pursue their musical studies at Round Top under the guidance of an international faculty. While the number of Festival-Institute alumni is in the thousands, the project manages to give each student the personal attention that has been a hallmark of its program: it is both a festival and an institute, where students and faculty perform for appreciative and large audiences. The concerts are broadcast through a yearly program titled “Live from Festival Hill” over public radio stations from coast to coast.

The campus is also used for conferences, meetings and retreats. The Festival Concert Hall, completed in April 2007, is one of the best in the country, acoustically speaking and strikingly beautiful. It is used for recordings. Major business groups, museum administrators, music critics, law firms, and numerous university and professional organizations have held conferences and retreats here. A series of distinguished museum lectures is presented at Festival Hill each year. The campus, famed for its gardens, rare trees, herbal collections, cascades, fountains and unusual landscaping, is a destination for visitors from all over the world. An outreach program of public services concerts featuring students and faculty extends the benefits of the Festival-Institute to the surrounding community.

You can find video clips of past performances on their YouTube channel, but here is an example of the incredible talent you can be witness to at Round Top Festival Institute.


Round Top's annual six-week summer Festival begins June 2 with opening concerts June 8. Public can buy tickets for the season or individual concert tickets at www.FestivalHill.org. Do yourself a favor - GO and ENJOY! The cost is very economical for witnessing such an incredible display of talent.


*Some text is borrowed from www.FestivalHill.org

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