Summer Music Camps

This past weekend, my wife and I traveled to the U of I to pick up my son from the Illinois Summer Youth Music camp, where he spent a week in the middle school band program. Here's why I always talk up going to summer music camps:

• He got to play in a large band of talented peers, practicing 4 hours a day, with a great director who taught them a lot.
  
• He played some great, challenging repertoire, including Emperata Overture, a piece I've done with high school bands. They played another piece that I had not heard before, but I plan to do it with the Concert Band this coming year.
  
• He got to play in the orchestra as well, directed by a U of I music ed/orchestra faculty member, Louis Bergonzi.
  
• He met band students from all over the state.
  
• He had a daily horn master class in which he learned about the original, valveless natural horn, how to care for his instrument, and what to look for in purchasing a new horn.
  
• For his elective class, he performed in an Indonesian Gamelan ensemble and learned about the music and culture of this fascinating musical tradition.
  

This was one jam-packed week of music! While we were there, I also had the chance to hear the final performance of the percussion camp, which happened to feature two DHS band members. They had a similarly intensive week, working with U of I professor Ricardo Flores. Their concert included a traditional concert percussion ensemble, a mallet ensemble, Afro-Cuban hand drumming, Brazilian samba batucada, and two Caribbean steel drum pieces. Again, that's a lot to experience in one week, way more than you can get during the year at DHS. Moral of the story: there's no better way to improve over the summer than to spend a week or two immersed in your music!