cutline info for attached photo (Oly strings wksp by Dewi Sprague) The Olympic Strings Workshop at Lake Crescent will present a free public concert Friday afternoon. Pictured during the 2022 camp are, from left, Marley Cochran, Courtney Smith, Jacklyn Minnoch and Luke Gavin. photo by Dewi Sprague/Olympic Strings Workshop
Diane Urbani de la Paz
For Peninsula Daily News
PORT ANGELES — This week at Lake Crescent, 15-year-old Violet Knobel is soaking up fresh takes on old music.
Knobel, a violist who uses the pronouns they and them, is partaking in the Olympic Strings Workshop, a music camp that will present a public concert Friday afternoon.
The performance, ranges from Baroque to pop, including Vivaldi, Beethoven, Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story” and Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke.” It all starts at 2 p.m. at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, 301 Lopez Ave., where admission is free.
This has been a high-energy week at NatureBridge, the Lake Crescent retreat center where a record 31 campers gathered Sunday.
“We have students from Port Angeles, Bellingham, Pittsburgh and Mexico,” said camp director Monique Mead, adding the youngest is Alice Tang, an 11-year-old violinist from Pittsburgh, Pa. The eldest is 19-year-old cellist Perla Jimenez from Tijuana.
“We are excited to have two guest faculty: Originally from Port Angeles, violinist Erin Hennessey is teaching chamber music, yoga, and Irish fiddling,” Mead added.
Hennessey, a freelance musician and graduate of Port Angeles High School as well as the Royal Irish Academy of Music, performs across the United States and Ireland.
Teaching cello, chamber music and Dalcroze eurhythmics — a process for awakening innate musicality — is Seattle-based cellist Jared Ballance. In his eurhythmics class, students bounce tennis balls and move to music to internalize rhythms and feel the music in the body before expressing it on their instruments.
Mead noted that Friday’s one-hour concert highlights Carlos Gardel’s tango, “Por Una Cabeza,” Dvorak’s songful “Cavatina” and two pieces by Black composers, William Grant Still and Florence Price.
The orchestra students have the camp director impressed: “With six cellos, six violas and a bass to round out the violin section,” she said, “the sound is rich and full.”
Then there’s the Counselor Quintet, composed of camp counselors Evan Cobb, Lauren Waldron, Adam Weller, Luke Gavin and Helen Koenig. They will perform a movement of César Franck’s Piano Quintet, a piece they observed at a rehearsal last summer at Peninsula College. The famed pianist Jeremy Denk played it with the Music on the Strait ensemble as they were preparing for their 2022 festival.
“They were so inspired by their playing that they chose to perform [the Franck quintet] this year,” Mead said.
It’s the mix of people at Olympic Strings Workshop, Knobel added, that makes it a mind-expanding week.
“In my three years of camp experience, I’ve learned from many different and returning musicians. Learning from various people is so important for developing your own skills and technique,” they said.
“Because of these classes, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to look at more than classical viola. I’ve had opportunities to play classical and jazz improvisation on viola and guitar … The repertoire is always amazing, but especially this year the music choice has just been so fun,” the violist added. Watching skilled players and hearing lots of feedback is tremendously helpful too.
“I’ve learned things,” Knobel said, “that can be useful to me for the rest of my life, not just at camp.”
The workshop, initially called Summer Strings, began in 2018 with just nine students; since then, Mead quipped, “we tend to have ‘happy campers’ who return every summer and bring their friends.”
Mornings start with yoga and mindfulness exercises. After a full day of workshops and music-making, the campers can lay down their instruments and jump into the lake for a bracing swim. Hikes to Marymere Falls are also on the agenda.
Dr. Chuck Whitney and his wife Darlene Whitney have been supporters of Olympic Strings Workshop since its beginnings. They’ve gathered donors and camp mentors including Mead and James Ray, the former Port Angeles High School orchestra director who is now a professor at Western Washington University.
The camp is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. For more information about the program and faculty, visit https://www.olympicstringsworkshop.org.
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Diane Urbani de la Paz is a freelance writer and photographer living in Port Townsend.
