Julia Dudek ’26 was introduced to Orvieto by herSigma Alpha Iotafraternity sisters and other music majors.
“They were vocalists, but when they found out that Orvieto Musica was opening a program for individual string players, they reached out thinking it might be something I’d be interested in,” Dudek, of Perkiomenvlle, Pennsylvania, said. She is a violinist studying music performance and church music.
Orvieto Musica is an intensive performance workshop for professionals, teachers and select students. The music festival currently offers programs in strings, voice, piano, organ, trumpet, tuba and euphonium, bassoon and composition.
Other students participating in the music festival are vocalists Julia Drewes ’26, amusicmajor from Beachwood, New Jersey; Ainsley Segedy ’26, anEnglish–secondary educationmajor from Drums, Pennsylvania; Robert Speece ’26, amusic educationmajor from Reading, Pennsylvania; and Kaeli Waldstein ’26, a music major from Bushkill, Pennsylvania.
Jaime Namminga, assistant professor of music and pianist, became involved in the program to support Dudek in her auditioning process. Like Dudek, this will be Namminga’s first year participating.
“I reached out to the program director to see if I could travel there with Julia as a faculty chaperone and whether there would be potential opportunity for me to present or perform,” Namminga said. “It just so happened they were interviewing piano faculty that exact week, and this outreach turned into an interview and I was hired.”
For her “audition,” Dudek was required to submit recordings of two contrasting pieces. She chose de Bériot’s Concerto No. 7 and a movement from Bach’s Sonata No. 1 in G minor – Fuga.
“The concerto is a showy work for violin and accompaniment, intended to be virtuosic and flashy, written in late Romantic style,” she explained. “The Fuga is unaccompanied, and while extremely technically challenging, tends to come across to an audience as simple and unornamented, as is traditional of the Baroque period.”
While abroad, Dudek will participate in lessons, master classes, smallensemblesand performances, as well as Italian language classes. Namminga’s schedule is similar but more in depth.
“I will be teaching lessons to thecollaborative pianostudents, coordinating their repertoire assignments, and coaching them and their musical partners on those assignments,” she said. “In addition, I will be performing regularly with students, faculty and guest artists, as well as giving chamber music master classes and presentations on various topics relevant to collaborative piano.”
As Namminga explained, opportunities such as Orvieto Musica offer students highly personalized coaching from world-class musicians while also immersing them in a differentculture.
“This will be an incredibly valuable experience for the students and will not only benefit them musically and lead to networking connections for future grad school auditions and career moves,” Namminga said, “but also culturally, as the program allows time for students to explore Orvieto and the surrounding area in evenings and on weekends.”
