- December 24, 2025
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Music camps have helped define Toby Perlman’s life. She met her husband, virtuoso violinist Itzhak Perlman, at one in the Adirondacks of New York when she was a student. After she was married and raising a family, Toby founded a summer music camp for strings students on Long Island in 1994. A decade later, the Perlman Music Program added a winter residency at USF Sarasota Manatee.
Is it OK to call the Perlman Music Program “camp”? It is, confirms Toby in a video interview. “That’s what we call it and that’s what we want it to feel like,” she says.
This year, after more than two decades at the USF campus, Perlman Music Program Suncoast is moving its free rehearsals and masterclasses to venues near downtown.
For the legions of fans who gather to see Perlman coach and conduct each year, this is great news. They will no longer have to sit in folding chairs in a heated tent and wait while the roughly 30 students and mentors take a dinner break.
It will be easy for them to leave and dine at a local restaurant and then return for the evening session, says PMP Suncoast Executive Director Lisa Berger.
What’s also new this year is that PMP Suncoast is asking audience members to register in advance to provide a better estimate of crowd size. “Asking people to register also helps us capture attendance numbers and collect information that helps us qualify for grants,” Berger says.
Another first is that nearly a dozen local students from the Sarasota Music Conservatory will play side-by-side with the PMP participants, who come from all over the globe.
These gifted local students, aged 8 to 17, will play Benjamin Britten’s “Simple Symphony” under the direction of Itzhak Perlman at an event billed as “Super Strings” on Jan. 5 at Church of the Palms.
Prior to COVID-19, students from across the state auditioned to participate in a side-by-side performance in the PMP Winter Residency, but this year the locals are only from Sarasota and Manatee counties.
“You can’t believe how exciting it is for the kids to play side-by-side with the PMP students,” says Lena Cambis, a Sarasota Orchestra member who co-founded the Sarasota Music Conservatory in 2008 and serves as its CEO.
What remains the same about PMP’s winter stay in Sarasota is that it culminates with a celebration concert at the Sarasota Opera House followed by a celebration dinner at Michael’s on East. These are the only events that attendees must pay for during the 12-day residency, but donations are gladly accepted, Berger says.
Some people celebrate the 12 Days of Christmas. In Sarasota, we celebrate the 12 Days of Perlman. One of the most beloved and acclaimed musicians in the world, Itzhak Perlman was born in Tel Aviv in 1945 to Polish immigrants. He became a citizen of Israel when the nation came into existence in 1948.
Perlman decided to become a musician at age 3 after hearing a violin performance on the radio. When he contracted polio the next year, he began using crutches to walk and learned to play violin while seated. These days, Perlman uses a scooter to get around.
Perlman has been a tireless advocate for accessibility, an important issue in a place like Sarasota where older people can face reduced mobility that makes it hard to attend cultural events.
When the Perlman Music Program Suncoast’s base of operations was in a tent on the USF Sarasota Manatee campus, wooden walkways were laid down over the grass to smooth the way for folks dependent on wheels. There were also golf carts to transport people from the parking lots to the tents.
With the new rehearsal locations in Sarasota — First Presbyterian Church, Church of the Palms and Sarasota Orchestra’s Holley Hall — “it should be easier for people to get around,” Berger said in a video interview.
The Sarasota locations will be more convenient for more people to reach than the USF campus, she says. “It was a schlep to the tent,” Berger says. “So many of our supporters live in the downtown area. We also have people coming from Longboat Key and Lakewood Ranch.”
Make no mistake — Itzhak Perlman has a devoted fan base who will follow him anywhere. As a youth, he appeared with The Rolling Stones and inspires the kind of adulation typically reserved for rock stars.
Long before it became fashionable to become a “cross-over” musician, Perlman moved easily between the worlds of pop culture, including a performance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” when he was a teen, and classical music, making his New York Philharmonic debut when he was 19.
During his career, Perlman has performed for royalty and presidents and has been awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, among many honors.
The man family, friends and fan call “Mr. P” recently appeared on “Barefoot Contessa” Ina Garten’s Food Network show, “Be My Guest.” The Nov. 2 episode, which was filmed in Garten’s barn, served up a potato galette with smoked salmon made by Garten along with Perlman’s scrambled eggs with caramelized onions. More proof of Perlman’s everyman appeal, if it was needed.
Despite Perlman’s fame and acclaim, it is Toby who deserves the credit for creating a program to nurture budding string musicians from all over the globe. Even though she met her husband at music camp, she remembers being lonely and isolated as a young violinist studying music at Juilliard School in New York, she said in a video interview.
“No one seemed to be happy. There was too much competition. I used to think about it for hours at a time,” she says. “When my children studied music, I got a look at teaching and conservatory practices.”
Slowly, Toby’s idea of a summer camp for young musicians took shape with the help of a girlhood friend who lived in East Hampton. She encouraged the Perlmans to buy a country house nearby.
Around this time, Toby said there was a group of people who wanted a start a music festival in East Hampton. That momentum helped fuel her idea for a summer music camp. The Perlman Music Program started as a modest affair, with a two-week program in August 1994 for young violinists, violists, cellists, bassists and pianists.
“We didn’t really know what we were doing,” Toby recalls. “We didn’t have any long-term goals.”
In 2000, PMP’s supporters helped the program find a 28-acre campus on Shelter Island overlooking Crescent Beach. This idyllic setting gives students the chance to hone their talents, make friends and build community.
It was Heidi Castleman, a longtime PMP faculty member, who was the impetus for creating a winter residency. She and her husband had a home in Sarasota, Toby said.
“Her husband was a doctor. He said Sarasota is full of cultured people who love music,” Toby recalls.
Over the years, the PMP Suncoast has faced some growing pains and the logistical challenges of international students and their instruments around the globe.
In Sarasota, most of the thorny issues are managed by Berger, a pro at troubleshooting who became PMP Suncoast’s executive director in 2020, after spending eight years in the same role at Art Center Sarasota.
“It was tough but we made it work, right?” Toby shouts to her husband, who is offscreen on the video call.
Ever since the Perlman Music Program set down stakes in Sarasota for its winter residency, Toby and Itzhak Perlman have spent their wedding anniversary here.
The pair were married Jan. 5, 1967. “How many years does that make?” she asks out loud. Nearly 60, the team on the video call calculates.
“You know, I proposed to him backstage,” Toby says dreamily. Cue the violins … and the violas … and the cellos.
