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Apple Hill gets new director
By Anika Clark
Sentinel Staff
The Keene Sentinel
Saturday, September 22, 2007
NELSON—Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music has a new executive director, after co-founder and longtime director, Eric Stumacher, stepped down this summer.
Effective Oct. 1, concert violist Leonard G. Matczynski, 59, will take the helm of the local non-profit, which for decades has emphasized the “transformative power” of music.
“Lenny has been one of our most beloved faculty festival artists for many years,” said Stumacher.
Matczynski, a musicians who has performed all over the world, said he’s taught at the Apple Hill Center’s summer music program since the 1980s.
He also served for decades as executive director of Emmanuel Music in Boston, which, according to its Web site, was founded in 1970 to enrich community culture in the area, and teaches part-time at The Boston Conservatory.
He is married to fellow violist Mary Ruth Ray, chairman of the music department at Brandeis University.
“I love Apple Hill,” Matczynski said, and explained that he was ready for a professional shift. But when asked what he might change about the center, he responded, “There’s nothing to change.”
If anything, he said, he’d like to continue to spread the word about Apple Hill, locally and abroad.
Founded in the 1970s, the Apple Hill center offers concerts and teaches workshops to people hailing from the inner cities of America to the far-reaches of the globe, according to Alfrieda “Dita” J. Englund, president of the center’s board of trustees.
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