Interlochen Piano Tours: On the Road, Again

Interlochen Arts Academy piano students pause in front of Cheney Auditorium in Kalamazoo, MI, after attending a concert performance by world-renowned pianist Yuja Wang as part of the 2024 Gilmore Piano Festival.

“It used to be a big thing,” says Dr. Kara Huber, the Marjorie Wood Drackett Piano Chair at Interlochen Arts Academy. Years ago, before her tenure, tours for Interlochen piano students offered them opportunities to perform off-campus, broadening their artistic horizons and bolstering their confidence. When Dr. Huber came to Interlochen in 2022, one of her top priorities was to revive touring for piano students. But funding would be needed.

A new series of gifts from Interlochen alumna Roberta Gordon (IAC 53, 55) is meeting that need, igniting a new series of piano tours.

The revived initiative syncs with Gordon’s musical career and her love of travel. In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, she spearheaded a series of goodwill educational programs that brought American piano and choral students to Russia, broadening their musical chops alongside their cultural savvy. She also founded an organization, the International Fine Arts Institute, to provide similar opportunities all around the world for young American musicians.

In spring 2023, Academy piano students were “back on the road again” with a trip to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Unlike the programs Gordon supported 30 years ago, this tour required neither visas nor passports. Just a few hours’ drive south of Interlochen, students connected with education staff of the prestigious Gilmore Piano Festival; learned from a festival piano technician; and traded notes (literally!) with a recent Gilmore Young Artist Award-winner, a rising piano star similar in age and artistic background to Interlochen piano students. The students also performed at a local senior-living facility, bringing a dose of Interlochen artistry to an atypical venue.

Gordon funded the entire 2023 tour, and with her ongoing support, piano students returned to Kalamazoo in 2024. They enjoyed four concerts of the Gilmore Festival—including one with the internationally renowned pianist Yuja Wang—and performed, themselves, at the Carnegie Center for the Arts in Three Rivers, MI, and again at the same senior home they visited in 2023.

Dr. Huber says these tours have been a true gift for her students.

The Roberta Gordon Piano Touring Fund provides a valuable experience for Interlochen piano majors to travel and attend world-class piano recitals. It also allows the students important performing experiences and community outreach that brings the students closer together.

Kara Huber, D.M.A.

Thanks to Gordon’s generosity, the best is yet to come for Interlochen piano tours. In 2025, students are set to perform on one of the most sought-after stages in the world: Carnegie Hall in Manhattan. It’ll be an experience they’ll remember for the rest of their lives, an exhilarating glimpse into a career in the arts, and, as they step onto the Carnegie stage, a view that even many professionals never get to enjoy.

As the old aphorism goes, Interlochen students’ path to Carnegie Hall will have been paved by practice, practice, and more practice—and also, in an essential way, by the tremendous generosity of arts education champion Roberta Gordon.