While most kids take a break from learning over the summer, Signal Mountain resident Anne Marie Ford got more intensive with her studies.
For most of June and July, the 15-year-old cellist studied every day and performed at least twice a week at the Sewanee Summer Music Festival. She was among 231 instrumental students ages 15-25 from six countries and 31 states featured in the fest.
Anne Marie has played with the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera Youth Orchestra for three and a half years, playing with the Symphony Orchestra - the CSOYO's top orchestra - for the past year.
At the CSO's final concert of the 2018-2019 season, Anne Marie was awarded the Grace Russel Scholarship to attend the Sewanee Summer Music Festival, along with the Linda and Robert Thompson Scholarship for further study in private lessons. The cost of the festival is $6,000, and the private lessons are $1,500.
During the festival, she rehearsed each morning with the Cumberland Orchestra, one of the festival's two full orchestras.
"It's one of the best orchestras I've been in," said Anne Marie, who spent afternoons practicing with chamber groups. "It's always very hard to get a good chamber group. To have that all sorted out for us is really nice."
After just a week of the private lessons afforded through her second scholarship, Anne Marie said she could already tell she was making progress, particularly in her technique - a focus for the intensive camp.
A cellist since age 12, Anne Marie said she definitely sees music in her future. It's in her blood; her father is Kevin Ford, director of choral activities at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and her grandmother was the first director of Signal Mountain's Mountain Arts Community Center.
Email Emily Crisman at ecrisman@timesfreepress.com.