Fontana turns 25 with new leadership and a vision for the future

Music is a way of life for Dr. Sophié van der Westhuizen, the newly appointed Executive and Artistic Director for Fontana Chamber Arts, which is celebrating 25 years of bringing in world-renowned musicians to perform in intimate settings.

She succeeds Bradley Wong, who became Fontana’s Executive Director in May, 2022 but had been involved with Fontana for more than 40 years. He announced his retirement from the organization in January.

When Wong assumed leadership of the organization, he says Fontana had “quite a bit because of COVID and unexpected staff retirements. Working with a smaller staff and managing the challenges posed by the pandemic,” he says.

“I think the Board needed to make sure that the Fontana season stayed active and they didn’t give me any particular set of charges,” he says of when he took the helm.

Wong added three concerts to the two concerts for that season.

“The other part important for me in taking the job is that I wanted to make sure Fontana remained an important part of the community as an organization that provided opportunities for young students and for the community to get more involved with Chamber Music. I am proud of the outreach programs we started.”

But, he says he’s also proud of the concerts he was able to curate and produce and the artists he brought in that resonated with patrons of Fontana.

When he retired, Wong was very pleased with Fontana and its mission. His hope, he says, is that van der Westhuizen will continue that, and he does not doubt that she will.

“Sophie has great artistic vision. She also loves this community. She’ll build on the programs developing and could put her own spin on it. I feel good about my retirement and Sophie as the next artistic director. She is ready for this opportunity, and Fontana is going to do well under her leadership.” 

Born and raised in South Africa, van der Westhuizen came to the United States in 2001 and did graduate work at the University of Cincinnati College of Conservatory Music, where she earned a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Piano Performance and Pedagogy (the method, practice, and overall theory of teaching).

The opportunity to study in a country almost 9,000 miles from where she grew up came after a German pianist who visited South Africa for concerts and Masterclasses connected with van der Westhuizen and offered her a full scholarship and a teaching assistantship. She would have company on this journey and what followed with a man who was offered the same opportunity and earned a Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Piano Performance

“We came to the States with a suitcase each, and we had to make it work without a support system,” van der Westhuizen says.

The “we” she refers to is herself and her husband, Pierre van der Westhuizen, Executive and Artistic Director of The Gilmore.

In addition to their respective jobs, they each perform individually and also together as the Westhuizen Duo.

“We started performing together when we were students because it was a great way for us to travel together and get paid, and because we were international students, for us to get back to South Africa we would schedule a large tour which would cover our airfare,” van der Westhuizen says.

In late August, they performed at the Saugatuck Chamber Music Festival. Earlier in the summer, they took to the stage at the Great Lakes Center for the Arts in Bay Harbor and at a festival at the University of Northern Colorado. They continue to perform nationally and internationally as their schedules allow.

Van der Westhuizen’s journey to become a professional musician began when she was four years old. Her mother is a pianist, and her father is a mathematician who played the violin and piano. She describes him as an “accomplished  amateur musician.”

Not long after learning how to play the piano under her mother’s tutelage, she began playing the violin and viola. She earned undergraduate degrees in Piano and Violin, deciding to focus her career on piano performance while still playing the stringed instruments with the Kalamazoo Philharmonic Orchestra.

She describes herself as a very “lyrical and passionate pianist. I perform my best when I can really emote and forget about myself and let the music flow. I’m most comfortable in playing Rachmaninoff, Schumann, Schubert, and Brahms. Those are composers who make me feel most at home.”

Alongside her performance career and her leadership of Fontana, van der Westhuizen serves on the faculty of Kalamazoo College, has her own piano studio, and is a summer artist-teacher at Interlochen Arts Camp. She is also a Board Member and Chair of the Artistic Advisory Committee for the Stulberg International String Competition.

Before coming to Kalamazoo, she served as Director of ArtsConnect for the Cleveland International Piano Competition, where she planned and executed an annual summer concert series, organized special festival events, performances, and masterclasses at the competition, and led continuous community engagement initiatives expanding access to high-level artistic programming.

Her academic appointments have included faculty positions at Heidelberg University, Youngstown State University, Cleveland State University, Western Michigan University, and The Music Settlement.

Her parents, she says, would have preferred that she went to Medical School, but she felt a strong need to express herself creatively.

“The things you learn by studying music are so transferable to life — discipline, memorizing, the ability to perform in public and handle performance anxiety. Surgeons at the Cleveland Clinic who were the parents of students I was teaching said learning music when they were young helped them steady their hands during surgery,” van der Westhuizen says. “You don’t necessarily know what you’re going to do with studying music. There’s so much that can transfer to other jobs. There are so many options.”

With Artificial Intelligence commanding attention across various areas of people’s lives, she says human connection remains what they want, and the arts provide it.

Connecting with audiences for 25 years and counting

With the merger of two Kalamazoo-area music organizations, Fontana Concert Society (founded by Neil Sanders, a prominent British hornist and WMU Professor) and the Chamber Music Society of Kalamazoo, Fontana Chamber Arts was established to continue the celebration of chamber music and to, in recent years, provide educational outreach. 

Originally, the organization ran a summer festival at the Shelbyville Arts Emporium, but eventually expanded performances to year-round offerings. In both 2005 and 2007, Fontana received the prestigious Chamber Music America/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming.

Van der Westhuizen says Fontana Chamber Arts has a strong history and a loyal following of community members who are passionate about it and willing to support it. However, its main sources of funding are grants and private donors.

This is not what she experienced in Europe or South Africa, where the majority of funding for music festivals or performances by artists is provided by the government. Given this model, she says that fundraising represents about 10 percent of budgets for many musical arts organizations.

Van der Westhuizen says Fontana Chamber Arts, the organization she now leads, has a strong history and a loyal following of community members who are passionate about it and willing to support it. Its main sources of funding are grants and private donors.

However, there are drawbacks to this government-driven source of funding.

Festival presenters and performers must align with politicians and, as was the case in South Africa, survive changes to the current government.

“The symphony and opera were state-sponsored, and when the government changed, all of the festival presenters financially collapsed, and they had to come up with different ways to find funding,” van der Westhuizen says. “Ultimately, the symphony collapsed, but groups of musicians and orchestras continued on and went through changes in how they present themselves.”

When van der Westhuizen was young, music in South Africa for her was mostly Eurocentric. This is no longer the case, with music by South Africans more prominently featured and embraced.

She says diversity has long been a hallmark of the Fontana and is a major contributor to its fundraising efforts.

“There’s a special niche that we fill that other local arts organizations aren’t focused on,” she says.

The Fontana presents four mainstage concerts annually —  one jazz, two traditional, and one which gives an opportunity to offer something different. Following this model is how van der Westhuizen intends to build on future fundraising.

“The biggest challenge is that we only have four concerts and so many groups who want to present. We try to balance between seasoned artists, but also young and up-and-coming exciting new rising stars,” she says. “We’re balancing traditional music with more creative and out-of-the-box performances and different genres.”

Some of the rising stars have come through chamber music camps and workshops offered by Fontana. Van der Westhuizen says she and her team are putting a focus on outreach efforts to grow future musicians and audience members. Middle school students and now high school students will have the opportunity to attend a one-week camp which culminates with a concert that is open to everyone. The 2027 camp is scheduled to take place June 20-25.

Van der Westhuizen says she thinks the Kalamazoo Public Schools’ music programs are churning out “very accomplished” musicians and the music camps build on what they’re learning. She and her husband have a senior and a sophomore attending Loy Norrix High School and a 6th and 7th grader who go to Milwood Middle School. They all play the piano and also a stringed instrument.

“I feel like I‘ve seen growth in the number of students playing a musical instrument specifically because of the great public schools program we have here,” she says.

“We’re building our future audience by investing in our young people. I will bring an ensemble to perform at the Chamber Music workshop, which is part of the mainstage, but we also have students who often have families that bring them to camp and don’t even know that we have these other concerts. We want them to become aware of what we have to offer.”

Fontana’s 25th Season:

Relic Early Music Ensemble, 7:30 p.m., Friday, Oct. 2 at Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU.

Fontana’s season opens with the acclaimed period instrument chamber orchestra Relic.

Described as “stylish and innovative” by New York Classical Review, Relic is known for its intimate, dramatic, and boldly imaginative approach to early music. Co-founded in 2022 by Kalamazoo native and cellist Cullen O’Neil, the ensemble has gained national attention for its unique narrative-driven approach to programming.

David Shifrin and the Miró Quartet, 7:30 p.m., Friday, Nov. 20 at Dalton Recital Hall, WMU.

Fontana welcomes the return of legendary clarinetist David Shifrin, performing with his frequent collaborators, the Miró Quartet.

One of the world’s most prominent clarinetists and an original member of the Fontana Ensemble, Shifrin is featured in Mozart’s beloved Clarinet Quintet and in arrangements of music by Benny Goodman.

The program also includes a Haydn string quartet and has distinct Shelbyville vibes from Fontana’s celebrated summer festival years.

Cuba Meets Brazil, 7:30 p.m., Friday, Feb. 19 at Dalton Recital Hall, WMU.

Cuba Meets Brazil unites two distinctive Latin jazz voices for an evening of contrasting styles and shared artistry.

Grammy-nominated guitarist Diego Figueiredo draws on Brazilian Jazz, Bossa Nova, and classical traditions, creating a style refined across performances in over 60 countries.

He’s joined by pianist Chuchito Valdés, a two-time Latin Grammy nominee and third-generation member of Cuba’s most storied musical family. His music draws on many styles including Afro-Cuban Latin Jazz, Bebop, Danzon, and classical.

Camerata RCO, 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 9, 2027 at Dalton Center Recital Hall, WMU. Sponsored by Long Road Investment Counsel.

Neill Sanders, founder of Fontana, was originally part of London’s Melos Ensemble, the first chamber group to have a roster assembled specifically to play larger chamber works, such as the octets of Schubert and Mendelssohn.

The Camerata RCO, made up of players from Amsterdam’s acclaimed Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, continues that tradition and will present a program of septets by Berwald and Beethoven — works that were favorites of audiences at the Art Emporium during Fontana’s summer festival.

Full Disclosure: Editor’s daughter, Cullen O’Neil, is a founding member of Relic Ensemble.