Meet the Sphinx Performance Academy Community Advisors

At Curtis Summerfest programs, Community Advisors serve in residential roles, such as watching over the wellbeing of participants and acting as mediators between students and faculty. Many of the Community Advisors for this year’s Sphinx Performance Academy are themselves former participants of SPA, and have happily found their way back to the program years later.

Maeve, a participant during both the 2010 and 2011 programs, looks back upon her time at SPA with nothing but fondness seven years later.

She notes how different the program is currently in comparison to when she had done it years before, regarding how far it has come and how much it has developed. New to the program as of 2016 are music theory classes that have been incorporated into the SPA curriculum, to ensure that the students have a holistic understanding of music past what is printed on their sheets. In a similar vein, the program continues to invite high profile artists to administer master classes and lead seminars in order to perpetually enrich the students’ musical experiences.

Conversely, even as the program continues to improve and grow, many aspects have remained very much the same. For one thing, the people have not changed. This 2018 program is a reunion between Maeve and fellow CA Annia, who met for the first time at the 2010 SPA program where they played the first movement of the Dvorak American String Quartet together. Coincidentally, the string quartet was coached by Karlos Rodriguez, the cellist of the Catalyst Quartet, who continues to be among the faculty of SPA to this day. This kind of consistency in SPA’s membership is indicative of the high level of devotion and dedication that the program inspires, as former participants jump at the chance to return to the program in some capacity even after they have entered their professional fields.

Maeve remarks that she is excited to come back to SPA as a colleague of her former mentors, as she had been wanting to return to the Sphinx program for a while. She is most looking forward to seeing all the changes that the program has gone through, to see how it has expanded and grown since she was a part of it many years ago.

Regarding SPA’s collaboration with Curtis, she is uplifted to see the extent of the involvement of the Summerfest staff in the ongoings of the SPA program. “It’s really an all hands on deck kind of situation,” she notes.

Linton, currently enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston, is another alumnus of the SPA program who returned as a Community Advisor this year. He first became involved with the Sphinx Organization in 2015 as a participant in SPA that summer, and has continued to attend conferences and competitions with Sphinx.

Linton is a violinist studying Music Therapy, and has recently wrapped up his sophomore year this May. He is interested in using music as a therapeutic medium to facilitate communication and motor skills. For individuals with Aspergers Syndrome or autism, music can be utilized as a way to communicate needs or wants that may be difficult to express through words; music therapy is also effective in treating patients with dementia, and can serve as a method to help recover lost memories.

He knew that he wanted to pursue a career in music since his sophomore year of high school. Linton attended SPA the summer after his junior year, and he credits his experience there as improving his technical skills and nurturing his musicianship. “It’s a space to be pushed”, he says, simply but firmly. “We were pushed to practice, and that made it an environment to grow.”

That summer was also responsible for consolidating his decision to pursue music, and demonstrating to him how hard he needed to work to make it happen. He recalls that it was “the first time I realized that there are other people out there that want it as bad as you do, and you have to put in a lot of work.” Linton also gives a nod to the kind of environment that Sphinx cultivates by choosing to provide opportunities specifically for Black and Latino students: “There were so many people like me, interested in music. I felt like I could relate.”

Regarding his role as a Community Advisor, someone that is responsible for the residential life and general wellbeing of the students in the program, he is excited to be supportive and inspiring towards the students. He wants to encourage them to take advantage of all of the opportunities and resources that SPA provides, and to treasure and appreciate the experience to the fullest.

He is also interested to see how the students will respond to being at a renowned institution in Curtis—how it will push them, and how it will inspire them. He hopes that experience will set an example for some of them as to where they want to be professionally, and where they can achieve if they put in the work to get there.

Annia is another CA at this summer’s Sphinx Performance Academy, and is also set to be a Dorm Parent at SPA’s next program in July at the Cleveland Institute of Music. She participated in SPA for four years, her last year being when she was 17. She is currently teaching seventh and eighth grade science, and has previously taught first and sixth grade.

When asked why she chose to come back to SPA after so many years, Annia’s face broke into a large smile. “I love Sphinx so, so much. I looked forward to it every single summer as a kid, and I’ve always been trying to come back to it.”

“It made me want to be a better musician, because I would want to show up every summer having improved, and wanting to play harder pieces.”

Since she last participated in SPA, Annia notices a greater variety in the guest artists that visit in order to give masterclasses to the SPA students. “It used to be mostly faculty, people that were already there.” The collaboration with Curtis also provides the opportunity to meet and interact with Curtis faculty and students, and have them be resources for the young aspiring musicians.

Zach is the 2018 Curtis Summerfest Business and Finance intern, and this is his third year on the Summerfest staff. He became involved with the program the summer after his freshman year, and speaks emphatically to the strides it has made since he first joined the team two years ago. The program admits musicians of increasing caliber each year, and continues to invite world-renowned faculty and guest artists to teach and to perform. On the administrative side, financial aid opportunities have increased significantly, record-keeping databases have been systematized, and even the website has improved dramatically in this short period.

Although Zach has never participated in SPA as a student, he is familiar with the Sphinx Organization—their base in Detroit is not far from the University of Michigan, where he studies. Over the last three years, he has been in conversation with Sphinx, speaking on behalf of multiple school organizations that focus on providing musical education to underrepresented and underprivileged youth, much as Sphinx does. These organizations have reached out to Sphinx, asking for consultations to see if their freshly-minted programs are on track, or if they are handling things well from an administrative perspective.

He emphasizes the generosity of the Sphinx Organization, in their continued dedication and support. “The mission of Sphinx is first and foremost celebrating diversity in the arts. They don’t see other organizations with similar goals as competition or hold back in aiding them, because they understand that they are promoting something that is bigger than themselves.”

Similar to Linton, Zach has high expectations of the SPA-Summerfest collaboration, believing that visiting Curtis itself will inspire the kids to work hard and “ignite the flame.” He also considers the collaboration mutually advantageous, in that the two organizations can learn from each other administratively and programmatically, and integrate successful aspects of each respective program into their own.

—Mary Kim, Princeton Intern for Civic Service

To learn more about the Sphinx Performance Academy, visit curtis.edu/Sphinx.

Sphinx Performance Academy at Curtis Summerfest is generously supported, in part, by the Dolfinger-McMahon Foundation.