Festival cofounder Roger Kalia conducts a concert at the village’s Shepard Park. Photograph courtesy of Lake George Music Festival
Scholars say composer Samuel Barber wrote Adagio for Strings in Austria. But watch a sunrise from Lake George’s shoreline—waves lapping, light breaking through the dawn mist—and you can imagine how Barber’s heart-stirring masterpiece that crescendos and crashes might have been inspired by this place. It’s possible. From the 1910s on, Barber spent time at his Aunt Louise and Uncle Sidney Homer’s summer retreat in Bolton Landing. The Homers likely looked to the lake for the same reason—Sidney was an accomplished composer and Louise sang with the Metropolitan Opera, as did her friend Marcella Sembrich, who also summered on this lake.
For centuries the arts have flourished here. Thomas Cole and Georgia O’Keeffe painted Lake George and its surroundings. Alfred Stieglitz photographed it. David Smith sculpted it. And now, on a humid August evening, seats are full at the Carriage House at Fort William Henry Resort. Rain, seen through the picture windows behind the stage, pummels down. There’s a distant whistle of a steamboat. And when the concert begins, musicians, among the best in the world, begin to play. There’s still magic happening on the Queen of American Lakes.
The Lake George Music Festival is about connections, explains its president, CEO and cofounder Alexander Lombard. There’s that “long list of artists who drew inspiration from Lake George,” he says, which explains why he picked the southern tip of the second biggest lake in the Adirondacks as backdrop for the festival. But there’s also the fact that this “is a place that could benefit from a cultural renaissance.” (You can’t ignore the village’s souvenir shops, Frankenstein wax museum, arcades, carousel and overall “carnival atmosphere,” as Lombard calls it, though even O’Keeffe and Stieglitz enjoyed playing putt-putt golf when they lived here.) In warm months the village draws sidewalk-clogging crowds, including during annual events such as the Americade motorcycle rally. Just as “you don’t have to ride a Harley Davidson to appreciate [the rally],” says Lombard, “classical music can be accessible to all.”
Lombard knows Lake George. He grew up in nearby Queensbury and spent summers working in Lake George village. His dad, Danny, is an entertainer aboard the Lake George Steamboat Company’s Lac du Saint Sacrement.
Like his dad, Alexander chose a life of music. He attended the Crane School of Music as a piano major and, after graduating, did what most musicians do: played in summer festivals. That’s where musicians—typically in college or teaching, freelancing or playing in professional orchestras—practice, perform and network, developing their artistry as well as lifelong friendships.
Alexander, who says he’s always had an entrepreneurial spirit, loved the festival world. “I wanted it to be my life,” he says. His vision incorporated the idea of a “music camp for grownups” in a place where attendees could “find cultural nourishment for themselves.” So he began by approaching his connections and in 2011, with colleagues Barbora Kolářová and Roger Kalia, launched the inaugural Lake George Music Festival. “Zero budget, all work was volunteer,” he says. Over three days, 30 musicians performed in local churches and at the village’s Shepard Park. It was the start of something big. The town also saw potential, supporting the event.
And the festival grew.
Today the Lake George Music Festival has ballooned into a two-week artists’ residency, with a budget of a quarter million dollars and a mission to “advance music, re-imagine the concert experience, and build audiences for the 21st century through artistic integrity and innovation.” Musicians, says Alexander, “come from all 50 states, around the world, and from every major conservatory.” They’re guest artists, artists-in-residence, mentors, and fellows—players, ages 18 and up, “who get lessons, master classes and play side by side with their heroes.”
There’s also a composer institute; each participant writes a work for string quartet to be workshopped, performed and recorded.
Making all of this happen is an extraordinary feat. Year-round outreach and house concerts raise awareness and funds. An active guild of volunteers hosts musicians during the festival, providing a bed and rides to rehearsals, contributing to potlucks and selling tickets, refreshments and merchandise at performances. Grants, sponsors and individual donations support festival operations and help it continue to expand.
According to Alexander, audiences, “mostly locals around Lake George and within a 50-mile radius, keep coming back.” But as the event becomes more established, there’s been an increase in “cultural tourists.”
While Alexander Lombard and his colleagues have helped put Lake George on the map for music-makers and -lovers, it wasn’t until 2023 that the festival had an official base of operations in the village. The Carriage House at Fort William Henry Resort suits the musicians’ needs and “has perfect acoustics,” says Alexander. Plus, it’s on land that ties the past to the present.
Here, 267 years ago, the French took the British’s Fort William Henry and burned it to the ground. (The fort was reconstructed on its original footprint in the 1950s.) Also here, in the mid-1800s, the first iteration of the posh Fort William Henry Hotel opened its doors. When it burned in 1909, another hotel of the same name went up, this one even more lavish. But through the decades tastes in lodging changed, as did the hotel and its adjacent carriage house, a massive structure once used to park horses, carriages and Model-Ts.
Last year, after a $3.5 million renovation, Fort William Henry Hotel unveiled the Carriage House as a 300-person wedding and event hall with a patio that overlooks the water. For two weeks every August, this is home to the Lake George Music Festival.
Back on stage that rainy August evening, a string quartet performs the world premiere of enfumée, an ambitious composition by Alyssa Weinberg, who’d been inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings as well as the haze from recent Canadian forest fires against the landscape. It’s followed by two more contemporary works and then, after intermission, the magnificence of Felix Mendelssohn’s Octet in E-flat Major fills the Carriage House.
Earlier, Alexander Lombard stressed that being a part of this festival “has a lasting impact on all the alumni—we’re all a part of a greater timeline.”
But something also happens to those who are listening, who from their seats can see Lake George, its waters shaping the music that will continue to move us long into the future.
The 2024 Lake George Music Festival happens August 11–22.
