Now’s your chance to pick up that guitar you got for Christmas last year! This course covers strumming basic guitar chords, plucking melodies, and reading TAB. Undoubtedly, you can learn how to play ANYTHING with an understanding of chord charts and TABs! (We will provide Guitars during class time.)

For students enrolled in the Young Artist Program with a few exceptions for Upper Book Curriculum students (upon approval). Ages 13+.

Come learn the basics of conducting! Students will learn some conducting techniques, some score-reading strategies, and how to lead an ensemble from the podium. Each student will have a chance to conduct live musicians over the course of the week. Students should bring their instrument to class.

Taught by Rachel Alvarado, this orchestra class will focus on developing and reinforcing reading fundamentals. Most importantly, no previous music reading experience is necessary. Students in this class will explore reading concepts including pitch and rhythm. Furthermore, they will learn to sightread short tunes as a group. Students will need to bring a music stand – music materials are given out each day.

Taught by Rachel Alvarado, this orchestra class will focus on developing and reinforcing reading fundamentals. Most importantly, no previous music reading experience is necessary. Students in this class will explore reading concepts including pitch and rhythm. Furthermore, they will learn to sightread short tunes as a group. Students will need to bring a music stand – music materials are given out each day.

Come learn “the gentle art” called Jiu Jitsu as a fun body-moving break from playing! During this class, students will be matched with people of similar size as we learn the art of grappling through various objective-based grappling games. Jiu Jitsu is one of the few martial arts that can be safely practiced at full speed. We will train at full speed with the goals of body-awareness, self-defense, and FUN!

Explore the secrets of rhythm, tuning, sight-reading, phrasing, and musical expression in this interactive and experiential ear training class! Singing is an important way for all musicians to access deeper levels of musical understanding and intuition away from the instrument. We will sing, conduct, and solfège our way through improvisations, sight-reading, familiar Suzuki classics, and group projects, learning important skills for practicing better and becoming more fluent and expressive in our musicianship along the way.

Composition – this course will take the entry level composition student to a basic understanding of harmony, phrase length, and form in 5 days! Basic arranging skills are added to leave the student craving to composer before the week is out! This class is taught by Michael McLean, an internationally noted composer. Michael’s music has been recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra and has composed many award-winning film scores.

StringsPop! is a performance-based class for teens and tweens to experiment with popular and folk music. We’ll learn how to read lead sheets and charts to arrange melody, harmony, bass, and percussion parts for a group performance. Create and compose your own part of the song with the music literacy and chord theory skills presented as games on our instruments.

Taught by Sophie Stanley. Ever wanted to learn the chill, relaxing style of the ukulele? Indeed, You Can ukulele! This course covers basic ukulele strumming patterns and chords, and a handful of fun tunes to annoy your parents with! (We will provide Ukulele’s during class time.)

Kodaly-based music and movement class teaching students music literacy, composition, music mapping, and music form through song games and play!

Music & Movement is core enrichment for twinklers.

Optional enrichment for ages 2-8 and Suzuki book 1 or below, depending on availability.

$85

This class focuses on musical independence, rhythm, as well as confidence and leadership through music. This is a high energy class where students will learn songs, create music, and have a blast while doing so!

Run, don’t walk to this chance to sing broadway classics and popular modern tunes! Students will learn multiple choral pieces in a fun and uplifting environment. Indeed, singing is one of the most important musical abilities that applies to any instrument.

(All bowed and plucked string instruments)

Upper Book Curriculum/Young Artist Program and ages 11+

We will explore improvisation that is focused on developing musicianship and creativity! We will learn specific techniques for improvising music including free, melodic, harmonic and motivic development. We will sing and play tunes and basslines from the classical, fiddle, and blues tradition and get our creative juices flowing!

(All bowed and plucked string instruments)

Lower Book Curriculum and ages 6/7-12

Come explore the world of creativity with games, movement, singing, playing, and story-telling. We will learn some familiar and unfamiliar tunes, create rhythm machines, depict different characters and scenes through musical play. We will also create a soundscape as a group, using melodies, drones, sound effects, background noises, and percussive elements, to create a story.

Explore fiddling in a fun-filled, interactive class!  You’ll try several kinds of tunes, and learn the difference between various fiddle styles. Students will learn all the music by ear in a call-and-response fashion. Learn techniques such as chopping, slides, arrangements, and different bowing styles. No previous fiddling experience needed! You will be placed in a fiddle class with one of our fiddling experts Lisa Deakins or Gretchen Grube.