Jarvi Academy

Jarvi Academy 2016
Tallin/ Parnu
teachers: Neeme Jarvi, Paavo Jarvi, Arkady Leythush (filling in for Leonid Grin)

Good things: - the repertoire
- the quality of the orchestra (Jarvi Academy Chamber orchestra, young musicians of very high level)
- Paavo and Neeme Jarvi are amazing, I could go for ever trying to depict how good, kind and involved in the masterclass they are.
- the masterclass is part of the Parnu Music Festival, which is the best thing I have had the chance to be a part of. The level of music making is mind blowing, and the people you get to meet there are just from another world. + you get to attend each and every of Paavo's rehearsals, which is where the true teaching happens.
- every thing is filmed, in good quality

Bad thing: - the organization.
- the organization
- the man responsible for the organization

the masterclass is run by a man (We'll call him Greg) who is a wanna be conductor, who happens not to have had the carreer he wishes he had. This man is a virtuoso at screwing things up. Every mistake he can make, evey little thing he can do to make your day more difficult, he will. He will never takes responsability for his mistakes and always blame it on someone else. Sometimes he will do it on purpose in a bit of a mafia-like way, for example, every active participant gets 15 minutes of podium time every day, except if you happen to be Estonian, then you'd get up to 25 minutes of podium time and the guys going afterward would just have to deal with it. Greg would tell you he is in charge of every thing (and he would get really ad when you try to bypass him), so when you would go to him at the end of the day in order to know what piece you're supposed to conduct on the next day, he'd tell you he'll send you an e mail during the evening to let you know. Of course you won't get any mail. The stories of this man's incompetence are countless, because of his lack of competence (and his will of sabotaging young conductors' hopes to improve) situations occured where a strong minded wery talented 24 year old man burst into tears after his podium time because he got screwed by Greg, one active participant decided to leave before the end of the workshop, reaching the point where an american girl (who was an active participant in a previous academy) came all the way to Estonia for a couple of days just to take charge of the organization to allow the participants to dodge Greg's incompetence.

SO yes, the organization could be improved, but appart from that, this masterclass is amazing, the level of music making is mind blowing, and the experience to study with Neeme and Paavo as teachers is one of the best things that happened in my musical life. The organization is the lemon you are to make your lemonade out of, but the rest of it is just pure gold