Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music




“Being at Apple Hill means that I get a chance to play music that broadens my horizons and helps me become a better musician, while working in a setting that embraces diversity. During my time at Apple Hill, I worked with and had amazing dialogues with musicians from around the U.S. and around the world. I interacted with musicians of various playing levels who were also scientists, lawyers, and various other professions. Apple Hill is truly a unique place to be in that sense. It just felt so freeing being at a place where I could express myself as both a human being and as a musician.

Apple Hill is also just really unique because it’s located in a very nice woodsy area and you get to stay in a cabin and walk up beautiful green hills and smell beautiful flowers, which is something I don’t get to do in my hometown. The setting of Apple Hill had a really calming effect on my mind, body and soul, and when I got back to work the day after leaving Apple Hill I actually came back to my job a lot more relaxed than I was before because I was doing what I love, which is playing music, in a peaceful natural setting.”

--Gabriella Grange

This week we are asking you to support improvements to our campus so that students like Gabriella have a rejuvenating environment in which to grow as musicians and individuals.

Apple Hill's Board of Trustees and Director Leonard Matczynski have made it a strategic goal to undertake one or more renovations to the campus every year. In the past eight years, 18 cabins have been renovated with plans to renovate 12 more in the future. Currently we are completing construction on Cabin H, making needed upgrades to the lower campus parking lot so that it is more fully accessible, and renovating the rehearsal barn inside and out. It is important to us to be good stewards of our campus so that students like Gabriella have a rejuvenating space to made music and meaningful connections.

About Apple Hill

Central to the mission of Apple Hill is Playing for Peace, a program that brings together musicians with political, cultural, ethnic, or religious differences to practice and play chamber music. We coach our students in the five skills of chamber music--watching, listening, flexibility, sensitivity, and adapting--the same skills needed to function in the world. Imagine two musicians with divergent backgrounds sitting across from each other. Their first task is to look at each other and start a piece of music together.

We believe music gives people inspiration and hope. Our summer students learn focus and confidence--something they may not be getting in their home environments. Our summer program is teeming with a diverse population from the U.S. and around the world and rather than music being just an artistic, academic, or technical pursuit, it now takes on the added benefit of being a powerful catalyst for connection. Just what our world needs right now!