Students work side-by-side with SMCM music faculty and Italian musicians to study music performance in residence in Alba, Italy.  Students attend master classes and perform concerts in a variety of venues as part of the Alba Summer Music Festival.

Students pay program fee to St. Mary's College of Maryland.  Program fee includes transportation, room, two meals each day, and emergency medical insurance.

The following links provide current health and safety information for Italy from the U.S. Department of State and the Center for Disease Control.

http://www.travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1146.html
http://wwwn.cdc.gov/travel/default.aspx

"Now that we have been back in the U.S. for a few weeks, the real impact of this trip on our daily lives is becoming more and more apparent.  Often times, memories of experiences like this disappear quickly as we return to our old patterns.  I don’t think any of us will let that happen with this experience.  All of the students who went on the trip are still in contact with each other, and also with the wonderful friends we met while in Italy.  The Italian hospitality was amazing – our new friends invited us into their homes, attended our concerts, showed us around the neighboring towns, and cooked us food, always being extremely warm and generous.  In September, two of them are coming to visit and stay with us, and we hope to return their generosity.

"We are also still remembering the high of so many successful performances.  We had the best opportunity to perform wonderful music with some truly amazing musicians.  Many of us felt that we gave the most intense and powerful performances of our lives, both as a group and as individuals, while on the tour.  Something about the atmosphere of living and working together in Saluzzo promoted a feeling of musicality that is impossible to duplicate elsewhere.  Already, everyone is thinking ahead to our next visit; those of us who have graduated (like myself) are trying to find ways to go back.  We all have roots in Saluzzo now that can’t be displaced."

Gwen Degentesh
Summer 2002

When we left for this year’s tour to Saluzzo, I was excited, but not nearly as much as I had been about last year’s trip.  We were staying and working at the same conservatory, eating at the same restaurant, going to the same gelaterias, and even traveling with the same students and faculty members, with a few additions and subtractions – it couldn’t be that different from last year.  From the first jet-lagged lunch in the Quattro Stagioni restaurant, I felt like I was returning to a comfortable home, rather than going on an exciting Italian adventure.  I should have known that Saluzzo still held all sorts of surprises for me.

It wasn’t until the first concert, with Ethel Ennis performing, that I began to realize this trip had a distinct character of its own.  The concert promoted the best feeling of camaraderie – there weren’t enough seats for everyone, so we stood and gave our seats to the Italian audience.  We all laughed about the jazz music being performed in a Baroque church not-so-thoroughly-converted into a performance venue, but enjoyed every second of Ethel’s magnetism on stage. 

Things were even more fun when we met some Italian students who spoke English and were absolutely thrilled to try it out on us.  They became our guides and friends for the rest of the trip.  After seeing them around Saluzzo in various places, we went to dinner in their homes, traveled to nightclubs with them, saw one of them play in a semi-professional soccer match, and watched the world cup Italian-style, with lots of shouting and gesticulating.  In fact, we are still emailing and talking to our new friends – two of them started part time jobs just to save money to come and visit in September.  We can’t wait to show them around D.C. and return their generosity.    

Meeting friends and having a real Italian experience was just the beginning of the trip’s excitement for me.  I truly believe that the special aspect of our tours comes from our close personal work with one another throughout the year, culminating with traveling, rehearsing and giving concerts together.  We did so many concerts – one of our musical groups performed almost every night.  The rehearsals were extremely intense, perhaps because we realized that our performance schedule was so rigorous, or because we worked and lived so closely with very gifted musicians.   

On this trip, I experienced a few moments of absolute musicality that are very rare; these happened not only on stage, but also in the audience.  I will never forget our performance of Mozart’s Requiem, which left us all physically and emotionally exhausted because we gave so much to it, or the last concert of the tour, where I watched entranced while Brian Ganz played two encores after the Mozart piano concerto.  In the two weeks of the trip, as performer, spectator, and friend, I learned more about Italy and being a musician than I ever anticipated at the trip’s start.