I’m very excited about the upcoming Seventh Festival del Lago, the summer music festival which runs from July 30 to August 15 and has attracted 55 talented students and eight experienced faculty members to lakeside.
This year about half of the students are from Mexico and the rest from Canada, the United States, England, Switzerland, France and Belgium. Festival director and founder Chris Wilshere and his many friends and collaborators (volunteer organizers, hosts for faculty and students, sponsors, et. al.) are doing many things right. The students and stellar faculty keep coming back to the vibrant town of Ajijic, because they love it. And most everyone in town loves this festival, maybe because it really is a part of the community and responds to the desires and tastes of the people.
In the early 1990s, the Jalisco Philharmonic Orchestra would come out to Ajijic playing mostly potboilers and things like the first movement of Beethoven 5. As part of the orchestra, I would always go out to greet people during intermission. One day a man asked me why we never played Brahms. Not much thought was given to the audience’s tastes for music at that time. That’s not the case with the festival; power to the people.
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