This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Elizabeth Pollard Fetter Chamber Music Program at Swarthmore College. The Music Department is set to celebrate this huge milestone with FetterFest, a series of music-making events taking place over Garnet Weekend. The Fest begins Friday, October 24th, with a masterclass and performance from the renowned Brentano String Quartet in Lang Concert Hall. It continues Saturday, October 25th, with various pop-up concerts around campus, and concludes that evening in Lang Concert Hall with a Fetter concert featuring program alumni. 

The Fetter Chamber Music Program is open to all students who participate in a Music Department Ensemble. Students may form any type of chamber group they wish, ranging from jazz combos to cello quintets. Groups rehearse on their own and with an assigned coach each week, culminating in a series of concerts featuring each student group.

Initially named the Pollard Scholarship Funds, the Fetter Program began in 1975, funded by Elizabeth Pollard Fetter, Class of 1925, in honor of her mother Emilie Garrett Pollard, Class of 1893. In 1977, after Elizabeth Fetter’s passing, her husband Frank Whitson Fetter, Class of 1920, expanded the program into the Elizabeth Pollard Fetter String Quartet Scholarships at Swarthmore College. In 2001, the program was renamed to its current title and expanded to support multiple student chamber groups in a variety of genres. Successive generations of the Fetter family have generously continued to fund the program. 

Today, the program attracts roughly 30 to 60 students each semester. The number of groups and styles of music varies, but development and community among the students remains constant, according to program co-director Jenny Honig. “I love watching the progression of individual students as they move from group to group, and just how much they grow musically. It’s always fun watching friendships translate to music making,” she says. Some students stay with one group for several consecutive semesters, while others move around. 

FetterFest will showcase the program’s continued impact on Swarthmore students, past and present. In the planning stages, co-directors Andrew Hauze and Jenny Honig envisioned a multi-faceted event where they could invite program alumni back to campus to make music with one another again. They wanted to create a “chamber music crawl,” as Honig put it. Honig and Hauze were delighted by the overwhelming alumni support they received when first proposing the idea. Annie Fetter, Elizabeth Fetter’s granddaughter, suggested reaching out to program alumna Serena Canin ’88. As a member of the distinguished Brentano String Quartet, Canin returns to Swarthmore as a prime example of the impact the Fetter Program can have on the lives of its students.  

“I am so excited that FetterFest will be celebrating making music together in small groups across a wide variety of genres and time periods, and most importantly that it will be uniting and reuniting many alums from 50 years of Swarthmore music history to make music together,” commented Professor Hauze. 

The festival will open with a performance by the Brentano String Quartet on Friday, October 24th at 8:00 PM in the Lang Music Concert Hall. They will perform Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in C Major and Antonín Dvořák’s String Quartet in G major. A reception in the Lang Music Lobby will follow the performance. The Brentano String Quartet will also be leading a masterclass with current Fetter students at noon the same day. 

On Saturday, October 24th at 10:30am and 1:30pm, alumni groups will perform in the lobby of the Lang Performing Arts Center (LPAC). Then, at 12:00pm, more groups will perform in the Dining and Community Commons. At 1:00pm, Professor Nathan Reiff will lead a community event in the Presser Room. At 3pm, members of the Chroma Quartet will perform in the Lang Concert Hall with violinist David Kim. The FetterFest grand finale, a chamber music concert, will take place on Saturday, October 25 at 7:00pm and will feature performances by more than three dozen alumni. It will be a  “musical marathon!” as Honig described it. This informal concert will be the culmination of the FetterFest weekend and bring the Fetter community together.