"Check, one, two, three - not very original, huh?" says Larry McDonald, grinning behind sunglasses. "Um, it's a beautiful day in Paradise. It'd be a wonderful day to float the river. Maybe next year we could hold this thing on a barge. I'm at a loss for words. So. Um. One, two, three. Yes. The sun is bearing down. I'm starting to hear strange sounds. I am talking and saying nothing. Um. It's hot, but it could be hotter. It's nice, but could be nicer. Oh, hi, Brenda!"
With that, McDonald steps away from the microphone and greets yet another visitor. Three hours before the evening's concert, people have already begun to mill around the grounds of Quinn's Hot Springs, where the Montana Baroque Music Festival is getting set to kick off its fifth annual three-day series of concerts. McDonald is one of a small army of volunteers from the community who have made this most unlikely festival happen near the banks of the Clark Fork River.
It's certainly a cultural oddity. The music of Bach and Vivaldi was written only a century or so after the Americas were (re)discovered by European adventurers. It was music intended for the hallowed halls of European royalty and the glorious sanctuaries of late-Renaissance churches.
Yet here it resounds from the tumbling stone of a western Montana mountainside, swirling in the evening breezes that sway tall ponderosas and lodgepoles, filling the ears of a beer-drinking crowd of Montanans, many of whom freely admit they wouldn't know Bach from Bartok.
"When I first heard about this thing, I thought it was a crazy-impossible idea," admits Judy Stephens, a retired elementary school music teacher who is one of the handful of active volunteers who make up the Sanders County Arts Council. "How would we get a crowd? Where would we get musicians to play this music?
"It's a far cry from anything we've had around here before."
In fact, it's a far cry from anything that is heard with any regularity anywhere in Montana. Only a small handful of musicians around the state know the specialized techniques and own the increasingly rare instruments called for in Baroque music (which, generally speaking, was written in a period from about 1600-1750).Carrie Krause is one such musician. The sunny, demure violinist from Bozeman admits it's hard to describe in lay terms the techniques that distinguish traditional Baroque-style performance from other, later styles of classical performance.
But she knows how to describe the music itself in terms that should appeal to the masses.
"Baroque music has an element of rock 'n' roll to it, moreso than most classical music," she says. "You have flashy treble playing over a driving bass, with very simple harmonies and an element of improvisation. So it's something I think anybody can appreciate today."
Appreciate, yes.
Play ... not so much.
That's why the musicians of the Montana Baroque Music Festival come from across North America. Most were connected, by one or two degrees of separation, to the festival's founding artistic director, Monica Huggett, a violinist from London, England, who first dreamed up the festival with Sanders County Arts Council director Jean Morrison after a chance meeting between the two six years ago.
"The world of early music is fairly tight-knit, so many of us have played together many times over the years," says Matthias Maute, a German-born recorder player who currently resides in Montreal, Quebec. "It is a very fun group of musicians, and at a festival like this where it is more relaxed, we really get to enjoy ourselves while we make this music together."
Maute makes his living playing festivals around the world. But he says his first experience at last year's festival in Paradise still stands out in his mind.
"So many concerts you play, you forget about them two weeks later," he says. "That is no risk here. You will never forget playing on a stage where you face out to the mountains and the river in Montana."
Adam LaMotte, a violinist from Portland, Ore., now serves as the festival's artistic director. He agrees that there's something special about playing for a small crowd of mostly new initiates in this outdoor setting.
"We've had to deal with the wind and the rain and the trains passing by, and yet it's all only an extreme positive to me," he says. "This is closer to the experience of playing a house concert, where you are just all together in one place and there's no formal divide between the audience and the performers. It feels like a collective experience, which is something you don't often feel in a concert hall."
By 7 p.m., a crowd of more than 150 people has assembled on the lawn where the concert is set to take place. Toward the back, wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt and holding his deaf and blind dog, Fluffy, sits Charles Meyer of Rollins."Last year when (Maute) finished playing, I had tears in my eyes, and yet I had to laugh," he says, his eyes twinking with remembrance. "It was just tears of joy. I couldn't believe how beautiful it was, and that it was happening here."
Meyer's wife, Cathy, concurs.
"This is really the highlight of our summer every year," she says. "I just can't understand why there aren't a thousand people here. We're so honored to have this quality of musicians here, and the ambiance is amazing."
Jaylene Naylor and Dan Pickett of Stevensville sit in the second row of folding chairs, sipping beers. Though they admit they don't know much about Baroque music ("I like 'The Four Seasons' by Vivaldi, but that's about the extent of it," laughs Pickett), the couple has attended the festival every year for the past three years.
After only attending one night of the festival in past years, they decided to rent a cabin at Quinn's and stay for the whole festival this year.
"It's just so awesome to be able to come up here, relax for a few days, have some beers and hear this music," says Naylor.
Nearby, Jeff Martins of Plains sits with his wife and two children. Jeff knows even less than Pickett about Baroque music, but his daughter, 12-year old Sheridan, insisted that the family come to the festival.
"I like all classical music, the Who and AC/DC," declares Sheridan. "So I really wanted to hear this when I saw the flyer about it."
So it echoes with concert-goer after concert-goer, kids and grandparents, deaf dogs and the few who know this music well.
"Oh, it's a marvelous thing to see this happening here, isn't it?" muses Lucien Hutt, a Missoula pianist who is recognized as one of the state's most respected musicians. "They've got a fine group of musicians playing. And where else are you going to hear this music in this area?"
Nowhere but here, mingling with the sounds of passing trucks, blown on the wind as curious osprey ride thermals overhead.
Baroque music in Montana? It's Paradise indeed.
Reach reporter Joe Nickell at (406) 523-5358 or at jnickell@missoulian.com. Photographer Kurt Wilson can be reached at 523-5270 or at kwilson@missoulian.com.
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