Marrowstone conductor is driven by his orchestra students

It's the 64th year for Marrowstone, Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras' intensive summer camp for young musicians. Based at Western Washington University in Bellingham, it will present several performances open to the public, including orchestral, chamber orchestra, faculty chamber music and lunchtime concerts.

The faculty includes top musicians from around the country, including three conductors as well as Stephen Rogers Radcliffe, music director and conductor of the SYSO.

Among them is Alastair Willis, familiar to Seattle audiences as resident conductor at the Seattle Symphony in 2002-2003.

It's worth wondering why, at 36 with a burgeoning career, he should come back for the fourth year running to work with students.

"I feel a responsibility to give back, I love to give back," he says. "I loved working with young conductors when I was playing in student orchestras."

This year, he is working with the most senior of the groups, the Festival Orchestra, and rehearsing Elgar's Enigma Variations (musical portraits of the composer's friends). With works by Tchaikovsky, Dukas and Wagner, it will be on the program Sunday.

Willis, who conducted the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestra in his first position out of graduate school, feels he works better with the more experienced kids. "The younger orchestras need more technical help, and I can't help with the strings. I'm a brass player," he says. (Trumpet is his instrument.)

The past three years he has conducted music from Strauss' "Rosenkavalier," Stravinsky's "Petrouchka," and Ravel's "Daphnis and Chloe" at Marrowstone. This year he felt it was time for English music.

"The Enigma Variations is a piece I feel very close to," he says. His first conductor studied with renowned Elgar conductor Sir Adrian Boult. Now Willis feels when he conducts the piece, he can pass on the nuggets of information he learned from that conductor who learned them from Boult. "I have a feeling for that piece, I love the sense of setting one's friends to music," he says. "One of the joys of these Enigma movements is learning about the characters."

For homework, Willis has assigned researching Elgar's friends to the orchestra members, who have then brought the information to rehearsal to share. He pushes the students hard, he says, whether they plan to go on to play professionally or not..

Willis feels a youth orchestra teaches wonderful qualities that will affect the students all their lives: personal relations, communication, punctuality, how they carry themselves, negotiation, discipline, group activity, how to think. "I like to make them think," he says.

Marrowstone Summer Music Festival is held at the Performing Arts Center, Western Washington University, Bellingham. Festival orchestra performances Sunday and Aug. 5 at 3 p.m.; faculty chamber music performances Saturday and Aug. 4 at 7 p.m.; tickets $16, students and seniors $10 at 360-650-6146 or tickets.wwu.edu. Marrowstone Chamber Orchestra, Friday and Aug. 3 at 7 p.m.; free. Lunchtime concerts at Fairhaven Village Green. Information: marrowstone.org.

-- Philippa Kiraly