Inside Interlochen's Ambitious, Multi-Year Centennial Celebration

It was June 24, 1928 when a cohort of 115 students from across the United States descended upon Interlochen, Michigan for the inaugural season of the National High School Orchestra Camp. In the annals of Interlochen Center for the Arts, that date officially denotes the beginning of an institution that has since tallied more than 100,000 summer campers and 14,000 boarding school alumni.

While the 100-year anniversary is still two years, two months, and two weeks away, Interlochen has already kicked off centennial celebrations. The Ticker sat down with Interlochen President Trey Devey to learn about the milestone and why it called for such an ambitious years-spanning birthday party.

“We've been thinking about this for a long time,” Devey laughs. “In fact, from the day I started, in 2017, I was imagining that moment when we would celebrate our 100th. We always thought 2026 would be the ideal time to kick off the centennial celebrations – for a lot of reasons, but the most relevant being that the National High School Orchestra Joseph Maddy convened in April 1926 was really when the idea of Interlochen first emerged.”

Maddy, who would go on to become Interlochen’s founder, was a fixture in American music circles at the time. According to Interlochen’s website, he became “the youngest member of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra” at the age of 18, “played vaudeville in Peoria and jazz in Chicago,” and taught music all over the country.

In 1925, while instructing at Ann Arbor Public Schools and the University of Michigan, Maddy was tasked with assembling and preparing “an ensemble of the nation’s finest high school orchestra musicians” to perform at the National Music Supervisors Conference in Detroit the following spring.

On April 16, 1926, Maddy’s ensemble – the first-ever National High School Orchestra – took the stage at Detroit’s Orchestra Hall. The orchestra included 230 young players from 25 states, and the logistical challenges of bringing them together meant the ensemble only got four days to rehearse. The teens stunned attendees at the conference with the quality of their playing. No one was more surprised than Maddy himself, who suddenly found himself wondering what a collection of the country’s best young musicians could accomplish if given a longer runway.

That idea ultimately led Maddy and fellow music educator Thaddeus P. Giddings to start the National High School Orchestra Camp in Interlochen in the summer of 1928. The name changed to the National Music Camp about a decade later, and then changed again in 1991, to Interlochen Arts Camp.

With so much history, Devey says it’s been a bit of a math problem to figure out how to celebrate Interlochen’s 100th anniversary. Should the milestone be about retelling Interlochen’s history? Honoring the innumerable successful alumni? Showcasing current students? Giving back to northern Michigan by bringing world-class artists to the region?

Why not all of the above?

To fit it all in, Interlochen’s centennial celebrations will span three years – 2026, 2027, and 2028 – each year recognizing a different centurion accomplishment. In 2027, the big milestone is the 100th season of camp, while 2028 brings the actual 100th anniversary.

This year honors the original idea of Interlochen, born from the aforementioned April 16, 1926 concert in Detroit. Next Thursday, Classical IPR will commemorate the 100th anniversary of that performance with a day of programming dubbed “Just an Idea.” Listeners are invited to tune in for historical retrospectives about the first National High School Orchestra, archival musical selections “reflecting the repertoire performed” at the 1926 concert, and segments highlighting “how Maddy’s belief in the potential of young artists continues to define the Interlochen Arts Group today.”

Devey says the centennial will include special student performances, visits from guest artists, cross-country tours, and debut presentations of creative works. For instance, Academy students just finished a brief tour with famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who was on campus last month for the world premiere of a new cello concerto composed by jazz extraordinaire Wynton Marsalis.

“That was really the kickoff of our centennial,” Devey says. “We were partnered with the Detroit Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony, and our students performed to sold-out audiences in the most renowned concert halls in the world. That’s hard to top, but we're going to try to do it with another equally impressive tour in 2028.”

Other highlights of the anniversary include the world premiere of Interlochen’s “first-ever feature-length documentary film, about regenerative agriculture,” which Devey says is set to “do the film festival circuit” this year; and the ongoing Shirley Young Distinguished Artists series, described by Devey as a way of “giving people in our community access to the greatest classical artists of this generation.” (The series’ next guest, opera superstar Renée Fleming, will take the stage on August 8.)

The biggest question mark around the centennial? How Interlochen’s thousands of alumni will figure in.

“We’re definitely going to celebrate our amazing alums and their extraordinary careers,” Devey tells The Ticker. “I’m not in a position right now to say much more than that, but imagine events with these all-star alumni artists coming together on our campus for truly once-in-a-lifetime experiences you wouldn’t be able to experience any place else. Those events will be a big piece of our celebrations in 2027 and 2028.”

Pictured: The second National High School Orchestra, performing at the 1927 NEA Department of Superintendence conference in Dallas.