OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK — You’re a teenager near summer’s end. For five days and nights you’re living by the lake, playing music, surrounded by people you’ve grown up with. Oh, and joining you are world-class musicians. These mentors are helping you explore music beloved for centuries — so you can play it in two public concerts.
This is Strings@NatureBridge, the Port Angeles Symphony’s summer camp and digital detox at the NatureBridge school on the shore of Lake Crescent.
Fifteen teenagers are studying with James Ray, longtime Port Angeles School District music teacher and newly appointed professor of music at Western Washington University in Bellingham, and with Monique Mead, violinist and educator known for her work at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Port Angeles-bred cellist and composer Jesse Ahmann, now based in Montana, is also on the camp teaching team.
This week steeped in music of composers such as Mozart, Debussy and Vivaldi culminates in a pair of performances: First at 7 tonight in NatureBridge’s new Storm King Hall, 111 Barnes Point Road at Lake Crescent, and then at First Presbyterian Church, 139 W. Eighth St., Port Angeles, on Friday. Admission is free to both and the public is invited.
The evenings also will include Carlos Gardel’s “Por una Cabeza,” a tango, and Pachelbel’s Canon for harp and violins. On these and other works, the Port Angeles students will collaborate with Mead’s own son and daughter, who traveled with her from Pittsburgh: pianist Tino, 14, and harpist Isabel, 16.
Mead, who along with Ray taught the first summer strings camp last year at Port Angeles High School, calls NatureBridge a dream.
She’s here to make the musical experience live up to the surroundings. The mornings will start with yoga taught by Mead; then come music and nature, with cellphones turned off all day and night except for 30 minutes after lunch and dinner.
“It’s real time, real people,” said Mead, who focuses not only on technique but also on soul. When teaching young students, she encourages them to connect with the emotions they feel in the music. It’s not about playing the piece exactly as the teacher instructed. It is about connecting personally with it, letting the music come from inside you.
Violinist Marley Cochran of Port Angeles, a student in last summer’s program, is a camp counselor this year. Mead and Ray have a particular ability to bring out the potential in each student, she said.
“As one of those past students, I can say that my life has been changed by studying with both James and Monique,” said Cochran, 19.
While campers’ families paid room and board, the Port Angeles Symphony sought and won grants, including a $4,000 award from the Beta Nu chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma Society International, to provide tuition scholarships.
These are an investment in the future of live classical music, since many of the Strings@NatureBridge participants are performers with the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra. So the camp not only helps young musicians develop their artistry, but also supports their work in the orchestra’s concerts throughout the year.
The prospect of performing live, Mead added, naturally transforms a musician.
“Some sort of hatch opens in the brain,” she said; an approaching concert “unlocks this potential to learn very rapidly. It’s like pushing the button in the James Bond car.”
Mead is herself well-acquainted with the phenomenon, having traveled the world to play with orchestras. She’ll return to perform as guest soloist with the Port Angeles Symphony here on Nov. 9.
For information about the camp and the concerts, see www.stringsatnature bridge.com and to find out more about the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra concerts starting in September, visit portangeles symphony.org or call 360-457-5579.
James Ray, former Port Angeles High School orchestras director and now Western Washington University professor, is teaching this week at Lake Crescent’s Strings@NatureBridge camp.
