MasterWorks Festival Director Talks About Concerts; To Write Column For Times-Union

BY TERESA SMITH, Times-Union Staff Writer

WINONA LAKE – The Christian Performing Artists’ Fellowship presents the Second Sunday Series, a series of concerts “in the spirit of the MasterWorks Festival,” said Executive Director Dr. Patrick Kavanaugh.

Opening night is set for Oct. 10 in Rodeheaver Auditorium at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free.

Kavanaugh and his family moved to Kosciusko County this summer from northern Virginia. With him came the Christian Performing Artists’ Fellowship and the annual MasterWorks Festival, which offers intensive fine arts training to young Christian musicians, singers and actors.

For the last three summers, for four weeks each summer, the MasterWorks Festival has brought together hundreds of the world’s finest classical musicians to the Grace College campus. With a huge orchestra of 110 players, the Rodeheaver Auditorium resounds with concert after concert – all free and open to the public.

“We think it’s very important the performances are free,” Kavanaugh said. “Few families can afford the high prices of typical orchestra concerts anymore. We love to see entire families at our productions.”

Next week Kavanaugh will begin a weekly column for the Times-Union titled “This Week in the World of Music.” It will be printed in the Thursday Leisure section. The director plans to present the life and times of the great composers in a light, humorous manner, offering a glimpse of events that happened the same week in the past.

The author of nine books, Kavanaugh writes for many major magazines around the country, such as the National Review, Audio and Focus on the Family. His books include “The Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers,” “You Are Talented,” “Music of the Great Composers,” “Raising Musical Kids,” “Worship – A Way of Life,” “Spiritual Moments with the Great Composers,” “Raising Children to Adore God” and “Devotions from the World of Music.”

In 1984, Patrick and Barbara Kavanaugh and a few others founded the Christian Performing Artists’ Fellowship. This organization has produced dozens of major concerts, from Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center to Bethlehem’s Manger Square to Moscow’s Bolshoi Theatre – where Kavanaugh became the first American conductor invited by the Russian government to conduct.

Eight years ago, CPAF began the annual MasterWorks Festival. It began in 1997 at Houghton College in New York, growing to the largest of its kind in the world. In 2002, after being invited by Brent Wilcoxson and the Village at Winona, MasterWorks moved to Grace College. The CPAF directors liked the area so much that they moved the ministry’s headquarters here, too.

“MasterWorks and Winona Lake are a perfect combination,” Kavanaugh said. “The people here are wonderful, friendly and supportive, and have a tremendous appreciation of great music.”

MasterWorks’ popular Sunday night faculty recitals are being extended throughout the year with the Second Sunday Series. The first half of the performance will be a classical recital, followed by a time of praise and worship.

Included in the Oct. 10 concert are: Barbara Kavanaugh, cello; Karen Wilder, soprano; Rebecca Valentino, violin; Jennifer Jackson, piano; Allyson Parks, mezzo-soprano; Elena Dunegan, clarinet; with performances by Bach, Beethoven, Brahams, Mozart, Strauss and others.