A student rehearses on the piano at one of the venues of the Zodiac Music Academy & Festival.
Colin Henley, a 2016 Mansfield Senior High graduate, will participate in the prestigious Zodiac Music Academy & Festival in France this summer.
Now a sophomore at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio, Henley earned statewide honors for his skill on the viola while at Senior High. He was a member of the All-State Orchestra and was principal chair viola with the Cleveland Youth Orchestra.
He will continue his quest to perfect his skill during the July 2-15 festival in Valdeblore Cote D’Azar.
Only 43 students from throughout the country were accepted. Henley is one of three violists on the roster.
“I applied early in the spring after my professor urged me to go,” Henley said. “It certainly is an opportunity. I feel so honored. I feel it was a good recognition for the work I have put in.”
On the Zodiac web site Artistic Director Kliment Krylovskiy explains the purpose of the summer program:
“The Zodiac Music Academy & Festival is designed to provide intense musical training and performance opportunity, while exposing young musicians to French culture and its way of music making. All this in an informal and highly personal setting, where students and professors share meals, perform together and become inspired by one another.”
Each instrumental student will have private instruction sessions and solo and chamber music ensemble performances.
Henley has been assigned to two chamber ensembles:
-- Sergei Prokofiev – Overture on Hebrew Themes Op. 34, which also includes a clarinet, two violins and a cello.
-- W.A. Mozart – Flute Quartet in D Major K. 285, which also features a flute, violin and cello.
“The Zodiac Music Academy & Festival is engaged by various venues on the Cote D’Azur, which provide students with opportunities to perform throughout the region,” Krylovskiy says on the web site. “All performances are video and audio recorded, and are made available to the students at the end of the session, free of charge.”
Alicia Tremmel, Henley’s orchestra instructor at Senior High, has no doubt he will succeed in France, in college and in life.
“Colin’s maturity is incredible,” she said. “He came back to Senior High this past school year to talk to our orchestra students about what college life is like. He said they could go to college and have a good time but he told them they must make up their minds what they want to be and work hard to achieve it.”
Henley, who earned a listing on the Dean’s List each semester at Baldwin Wallace, said college has allowed him to “find out a lot more about myself.” That is his continuing goal at the Zodiac Music Academy & Festival.
“I want to be the very best I can be with my music,” Henley said. “After I earn my music degree I still hope to return to college to earn a degree in architecture. That’s my professional goal.”