Etchings ’26: Old Friends, New Fellows
On a warm Northampton evening, we kicked off another edition of the Etchings Festival at the Highbrow Pizza Kitchen in Northampton. The welcome dinner has become something of a ritual since the festival began in ‘09. The dinner is always abuzz well before the drinks arrive with fellows greeting each other for the first time and our team weaving in and out of conversations. It’s an opportunity for fellows to interact with each other and with the guest composers in a relaxed and informal setting. These kinds of features define Etchings’ approach to cultivating music in a way that’s embedded in the community: the same friends we met at Highbrow came to the festival concerts just a few days later.
The guest composers are a special bunch, and there are more than a few of them. Six in total this summer. The guests outline an intergenerational cross-section but are bound together in a love and curiosity for what the fellows will bring to the table. Connecting with the fellows always feels like a way of connecting our own lives with the future of music, which leads inherently to a reflection on the Century’s-old traditions that have carried all these styles and genres into the now.
Michael Djupstrom is a new addition to the festival and his gregarious nature put the fellows at ease (as if that was needed). But of course, his calm demeanor belies a deep creative intensity that came out in his incisive and dedicated coachings through the week. Kate Soper and her daughter Robin made an appearance at the festival dinner and Julia Werntz shared a few stories as well. Just as the dinner felt like a group of equals coming together, so the week also felt communal and cultivating without the need to pull rank. A kind of circular exchange crossed from the dinner into the week of work.
As these events stretch on, we all hope that we feel a little more like we belong and that we’ll be heard. And so the first toast brings the new fellows together with the old team in a full circle.
