A once low-key music school aims to hit high notes

Field Note Music School expanding to new building with recording studio and performance space

Some 10,000 subsidized music lessons have been offered by the newly renamed Field Note school in Ellsworth. Photo courtesy of Field Note Music School.

Aug. 11, 2026

By Rebecca Nemser

A small nonprofit in Ellsworth has provided over 10,000 subsidized music lessons to the community since its founding in 2013. Many of its students and teachers come from the  Blue Hill Peninsula, but the Ellsworth Community Music Institute has kept a relatively low profile.

Its new executive director, Peter van Reesema, is determined to change that.

Ellsworth Community Music Institute has been renamed to Field Note School of Music and relocated to a new space on State Street. Photo courtesy of Field Note Music School.

Since van Reesema came on board in January, the school has a new space, a new logo, and a new name: Field Note Music School.

“I wanted a new name that reflects the whole region,” van Reesema said.

The name came to him one morning while running through a field.

“The sun was perfectly coming in and the birds were telling the forest to wake up, and  everything felt so alive, and I thought, ‘What is this sound?’ Maybe you can call it a field note,’” he recounted.

After years of working and traveling as conductor, pianist, and music director in Broadway shows including Hamilton and Wicked, van Reesema was looking to pursue his vocation for music education and move to Maine, where his wife Rosie grew up.

The school is now moving to a much bigger space in Ellsworth, at 6 State Street, next door to the Ellsworth Public Library. It will include a performance space for 50 people, a recording studio, and soundproofed practice rooms with wall to wall windows on multiple floors.

“It’s going to be gorgeous,” van Reesema said of the new space, which is scheduled to open on Sept. 14. 

Long before he became executive director at Field Note, van Reesema’s first piano teacher was his Venezuelan grandfather.

“He kept me on the piano bench next to him and we would play old Frank Sinatra songs together and he would sing,” he said. His mother and grandparents emigrated from Caracas, Venezuela, which is famous for El Sistema, a free music school, where the legendary conductor Gustavo Dudamel was once a student.

It was van Reesema’s grandfather, pictured here, who taught him piano. Photo courtesy of Peter van Reesema.

“That cultural heritage really inspires my vision of what Field Note can be,” van Reesema said.

That vision is fueled in large part by a 2024 capital campaign launched by the school’s founder, Nancy Colter, and board president Vivian Pyle, which raised $255,000 to secure the school’s tuition assistance program, develop community outreach, move to the new building, and hire an executive director.

“Peter has totally changed the vibe. He has done a major overhaul, his energy is really good, and he is expanding out into the community more.” said Heidi Powell, who teaches violin at Field Note.

Powell, who is the artistic director for BOOM, the Baroque Orchestra of Maine, is launching a series of chamber music ensemble sessions at the school, further evidence of the school’s expanding offerings. 

“I really like teaching people how to play in a group,” Powell said. “I went to Kneisel Hall as a teenager and came back to the area because of the creativity level for musicians and artists. There is something special about the air here that allows for some kind of creativity, you can be inspired, and a slightly more simplified life. You have to be willing to get deeper with yourself.”

Van Reesema first learned of the job through his wife Rosie, who is the executive director of the summer concert series Blue Hill Bach. Growing up in the area, she also has deep roots in music.

“My mom had us volunteering at Penobscot Nursing Home and singing for the residents,” she said.

The school’s new logo.

Then came a chance encounter with the Grammy award-winning pianist and composer Paul Sullivan, who lives in Sedgwick, and who was also a volunteer at the nursing home where he played piano.

“When he heard me sing I Could Have Danced All Night, he whipped his head around and asked me to sing with him all over the peninsula,” she said. 

Sullivan encouraged her to pursue a career in music. It was while studying at the Conservatory in Ohio that she met Peter when he was her accompanist in the voice studio.

“I was too enamored of her to remember the piece of music we played,” he said. 

“Growing up on the Blue Hill Peninsula—surrounded by the ocean, the quiet of nature, and a vibrant community of artists–was an ideal environment for me as an introspective child,” said piano teacher Erika Allen. After studying music at Kneisel Hall, she pursued her passion for piano at Juilliard and the New England Conservatory. Taking a break from an impressive performing career, she came back to Blue Hill to raise her family and teach piano at Field Note. 

“Nothing compares to witnessing a student’s breakthrough moment and sharing in their joy,” Allen said. 

Students agree.

“I love their mission of making music learning affordable and available to all kinds of people, beginners as well as advanced, across the socioeconomic scale,” said Don Christian, a former college president who retired to Blue Hill and is studying piano with Allen. “She’s amazing. The way she talks about music is very poetical. She has made me not just a better player but a better musician.”

Zoe Macomber, a high school student from Blue Hill, loves to sing and takes vocal lessons from Rosie van Reesema at Field Note. “Rosie’s lessons are jam packed with warmups, practice runs, and more,” she said. “I have learned and improved so much.”