HISTORY - SEE BELOW FOR A LINK TO THE PIERRE MONTEUX ARCHIVES
The Monteux School And Music Festival was founded in 1943 by internationally renowned French-born conductor Pierre Monteux (1875-1964) and his wife, Doris Hodgkins Monteux (1894-1984), as a summer school for conductors and orchestra musicians in Hancock, inspired in part by Monteux’s earlier conducting classes in France.
A few years after his death, his wife Doris named Charles Bruck (1911-1995) the second music director of the school. Monteux’s pupil in Paris, Bruck had enjoyed a close friendship with Monteux through the years and was uniquely qualified to carry on the traditions of the school. Bruck served as the school’s music director and master teacher for over a quarter century, becoming one of the great conducting teachers of his generation.
In 1995, Charles Bruck’s long-time student and associate Michael Jinbo was named the school’s third music director. Jinbo’s teaching, consistently praised by colleagues and students, continues the tradition established by Monteux and Bruck, and exemplifies the musical integrity and high standards of excellence of his distinguished predecessors.
PIErre monteux
Pierre Monteux was a distinguished conductor whose storied career included music directorships of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the Metropolitan Opera, the Boston Symphony, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris (which he formed), the London Symphony, and the San Francisco Symphony, among others. Held in high regard not only for his work with traditional repertoire, but with contemporary music, Monteux premiered many masterworks of the 20th century, including Maurice Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé, Claude Debussy’s Jeux, and Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and Petrushka.
Monteux became an American citizen in 1942 and made his permanent residence in Hancock, Maine, the childhood home of his wife Doris Hodgkins Monteux (1894-1984). It is on this property that the Monteux School And Festival stands today.
Originally trained as a violist, Monteux performed for both Edvard Grieg and Johannes Brahms as a member of the Quatuor Geloso. Remembering his experience as a musician, Monteux created his school with the requirement that conductors also play in the orchestra. Musicians came from all over the world to Hancock to study with their beloved “Maitre.” Monteux once said: “Conducting is not enough. I must create something. I am not a composer, so I will create fine young musicians.”
CHARLES BRUCK
Charles Bruck (1911-1995) was for twenty-six years Music Director of the Pierre Monteux School. Monteux’s late wife, Doris Monteux, named Bruck the second music director of the school a few years after her husband’s passing.
Born in Timisoara, Hungary (now Romania), Bruck studied at the Vienna Conservatory and then in France, where he was one of Pierre Monteux’s first conducting students in Paris. In 1936, simultaneous to earning the degree Doctor of Laws from the University of Paris, he was appointed associate conductor of the Paris Symphony Orchestra. Bruck went on to lead the Netherlands Opera, the Strasbourg Radio Symphony and the Paris Radio Philharmonic (ORTF). Following World War II, he was made an officer in the French Legion of Honor for his work in the Resistance.
A noted champion of contemporary composers and their music, Bruck conducted world-wide, leading over seven-hundred premieres by such diverse composers as Prokofiev, Poulenc, Martinu, Xenakis and Stockhausen. Bruck recorded for Columbia, Deutsche Grammaphon, Erato and EMI. Most famous among his many discs are the historic first recording of Prokofiev’s opera, The Flaming Angel, and Gluck’s Orfeo, with the legendary Kathleen Ferrier.
Bruck made his U.S. conducting debut in 1936 and later guest-conducted many American orchestras. He served as Director of Orchestral Activities at the Hartt School of the University of Hartford in the early 1980s and was a visiting professor at Princeton University in 1992.
Nancie Monteux-Barendse
Administrator (1984–2005)
PIerre and Doris Monteux’s daughter Nancie Monteux-Barendse (1917 -2013) served as Administrator for The Monteux School and as President of the Board of Trustees of the Pierre Monteux Memorial Foundation. Born in Boston, Nancie Monteux received her early education in boarding schools and under private tutors in Belgium and France, where she lived and traveled with her parents. She began studying dance at the age of eight, concentrating on the Dalcroze method, and later worked with pupils of Isadora Duncan, Mary Wigman, and Ballet Classique. In 1934, she made her recital debut with the Orchestre Symphonique de Paris, conducted by her father. Recitals followed in Paris and in California, where she was a member of the Théâtre Français de San Francisco. Nancie Monteux married in 1941 and spent the war years in Hancock, Maine, where she returned most summers with her four sons. In the 1960s, with her French-American husband, she owned and operated an inn in southern Vermont, which received significant and extended praise from Craig Claiborne in The New York Times. In the 1970s, she returned to Hancock to assist her mother, Doris, with the running of The Monteux School, and took over as Administrator upon her mother’s passing in 1984 until 2005.
Claude Monteux
Musical Advisor (1996–2005)
Claude Monteux served as Musical Advisor for The Pierre Monteux School as it was then known, where he coached chamber ensembles and works privately with conductors in their score study. He established successful dual international careers as both a concert flutist and conductor. As a flutist, he played under the batons of Toscanini, Walter, Beecham, Stokowski, Casals, Stravinsky, and his father Pierre Monteux. On the podium, he served as Music Director of the Columbus Symphony (1953–56) and the Hudson Valley Philharmonic (1959–75). Claude Monteux studied conducting with his father, both privately and at The Pierre Monteux School. Over the course of his career, he appeared in concert and recordings with orchestras throughout the world, including the London Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the NBC Symphony, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, and orchestras in Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Norway and Holland. He recorded extensively for record labels including London, and Philips, including concerti by Mozart and Bach with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. He also served on the faculties of the New England Conservatory of Music, the Peabody Conservatory, Vassar College, and Ohio State University.
MICHAEL JINBO
Michael Jinbo (1995-2022) celebrated his twenty-seventh season as Music Director of The Monteux School and Music Festival in 2021. Associate Music Director to Charles Bruck and a student of the School prior to becoming Music Director, Jinbo has enjoyed an affiliation with the school since 1983. As only the third music director in the school’s 77-year history history, he followed his mentor, Charles Bruck, and the school’s founder, Pierre Monteux. Jinbo also served as Music Director of Pennsylvania’s Nittany Valley Symphony, and for four seasons served as Assistant Conductor of the North Carolina Symphony, conducting 60-75 concerts each season, including classical ballet, pops and educational programs.
Jinbo has performed with a wide range of artists over his career, including pianist Garrick Ohlsson, violinist Kyoko Takezawa, prima ballerina assoluta Galina Mezentseva and the St. Petersburg Ballet of Russia, and the legendary Cab Calloway.
Jinbo held a B.A. in Music from The University of Chicago and an M.M. in Conducting from Northwestern University School of Music. In addition to his training at The Monteux School, he studied conducting at the Herbert Blomstedt Institute, the Scotia Festival of Music, and participated in workshops held by the American Symphony Orchestra League and the Conductors Guild. He has twice been appointed to serve on the instrumental music panel of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. As a violinist, Michael Jinbo appeared as soloist with the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, among others. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, he resided in Augusta, Maine.