Karen Kistler

karen.kistler@salisburypost.com

 

SALISBURY — It was while a fifth grader at McKee Road Elementary School in Charlotte that Peter Ferretti, the new executive director of the Salisbury Symphony, was first introduced to musical instruments.

Ferretti said that he chose the viola and clarinet as the two he was interested in learning, but he was tall and his strings teacher told him, “you’re going to play the bass” and Ferretti said he fell in love with it and quickly became pretty good at the instrument.

During his sixth grade year, he joined the Charlotte Youth Symphony’s program, which he said allowed him many special opportunities including attending the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro as well as going to Interlochen’s summer program.

Getting involved in music, he said, was by accident in a way, “but it’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about education in schools because that’s how I met this thing that changed my life.” 

Ferretti is a native of Charlotte and lived there most of his adolescent life. His mom was employed by Bank of America, named NCNB at that time, and was transferred to Dallas where they lived for a year and then returned to Charlotte. In time, he said, he attended a boarding school in California, which he said is one of the three pre-professional arts boarding schools in the country and studied the bass there.

As noted in Ferretti’s biography, he graduated high school from the Idyllwild Arts Academy, earned a bachelor of music degree from New England Conservatory and a master of music in historical bass from The Juilliard School, where he studied the various historical bass instruments with Rob Nairn and G-violone with Heather Miller Lardin.

In addition to his musical degrees, Ferretti also holds a master of arts in international relations from Utrecht University, an institution from which he graduated cum laude, and worked in The Americas research division of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin.

After Julliard, Ferretti said that he was tasked to run the orchestra for Teatro Nuovo, a new opera company based in New York City, and “that’s really where I learned that I first of all, loved work in the administrative side of being a musician,”

Loving puzzles, he added that he found out that being an administrator was a way for him to “solve problems and try to fund things that I care about and really focus on the nuts and bolts of what it means to present these kinds of concerts that I’ve found so important my whole life.”

In addition to serving as the institution’s director of orchestra operations, he was also performing as Teatro Nuovo’s principal double bass. 

Additional responsibilities have included serving as executive director of Vieux Carré Opera, Co., an emerging opera company focused on highlighting the transatlantic journey of the French Grand Opera from Paris to New Orleans.

Among his musical accomplishments, as is noted in Ferretti’s biography, he has also played, toured and recorded with many of the world’s leading chamber orchestras and historically informed ensembles.

Beyond his principal bass position with Teatro Nuovo, he performs regularly with the Handel + Haydn Society and has appeared with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, the Arcadia Players, the Bach Virtuosi Festival and the Bach Akademie Charlotte. 

As an educator, he has presented and assisted in presenting masterclasses at Indiana University and The Juilliard School, served on the faculty of the Medomak Conducting Institute and delivered lectures for the Deutsche Rossini Gesellschaft.

Having lived in Germany for the last seven years, Ferretti is now making his home in Salisbury and started in his role with the Salisbury Symphony on May 27, “just in time to catch the Pops at the Post,” he said.

As executive director of the symphony, Ferretti said his focus right now personally is to “learn as much as I can about the town, about what the town likes about the orchestra and about what works.”

He said that, being from the Piedmont, he is excited about returning to the area having spent lots of time working in Europe, noting in particular, he has spent lots of time in Spain, France and Italy.

“That shaped me in many ways, but when I was thinking about this move, one of the reasons I was so excited to see this job posting in Salisbury was that I love this state,” said Ferretti. 

He noted that moving home would be exciting and he would be close to where he spent his childhood, which would be great.

“But I think the biggest thing is that I love this concept of a regional orchestra,” said Ferretti. “I think that there’s something so exciting about a town of 36,000 people being so passionate about supporting an institution like this because it gives you some ownership over your cultural history.”

As for the duties he will have, he said an executive director means different things to different organizations.

“Finding out what that role is best suited to help with an institution is, I think, one of the most important things you can learn in the first 90 days,” he said.

However, in general, he said, the one serving in that role is the administrative head of the orchestra and they, with the board, do a lot of fundraising. 

“Salisbury is a small institution in terms of the number of people that work for it, so I think for me that was one of the appeals,” he said. “I think you can really get into the nuts and bolts of operations and fundraising and short-medium-long term planning, these kinds of really exciting activities.” 

As Ferretti begins in his new role in Salisbury, he said that his intention is to “learn as much as I can about the orchestra as quickly as I can, learn as much about the community as quickly as I can and figure out ways that we can all grow together.”