<p>Given that many students are well into their summer programs (or have completed them), I thought it would be a good idea to describe their experiences for future years. Suggestions: include the name of the program in the title of your post to make searching more efficient. As well, include information on non-musical things like food and dorms where they are significant!</p>
<p>S is spending two weeks at Orford which is just over an hour east of Montreal in a beautiful natural setting next to a national park. Dorms are good (one roommate); S’s last experience in Quebec at a different program had very old crowded dorms that filled with hundreds of insects every day, so he is enjoying the bug-free environment.</p>
<p>Orford is much less structured than other summer programs that S has attended. You are attached to a teacher for a week for masterclasses (or two weeks if you are placed in the same studio for both weeks) and there is no chamber music or orchestra during the masterclass weeks; you need to choose a specific chamber or orchestra program which are held during different weeks. </p>
<p>Typically, mornings are for individual practice and afternoons involve about 4 hours of masterclass. There are at least three concerts a week, but there is more free time in the evenings than many programs that have a concert or recital every night of the week. </p>
<p>Last week S’s masterclass had 9 participants who varied in ability (everything from a Juilliard grad who was not noticably better than the two or three other top students, to some rather average high school students). This week’s masterclass has 6 participants who are all quite good.</p>
<p>The quality of experience/learning depends heavily on the teacher. Some teachers do not do great masterclasses (i.e. focus on the details of fingerings and bowings that are of little interest to the observing students) while other teachers speak engagingly to issues that are of interest to everyone in the class. In this week’s class, everyone plays every day in the masterclass. </p>
<p>Accompanists are excellent: they know the repertoire solidly and produce excellent performances with little rehearsal. </p>
<p>Recommendation: for serious, self-motivated students (probably not best for young undisciplined high school students); be certain to check out the quality of the masterclass teacher prior to committing to a week with them. While all the teachers are world-class (i.e. from the better schools in Europe, the US, and Canada including many from NEC, Indiana, McGill etc.), some are probably better performers or private teachers than they are in the masterclass environment.</p>
<p>My son, performance major cello, also just attended Orford, 2nd year in a row. He worked with two different teachers in the “Master Classes” and had received excellent, important instruction. As violindad said, there’s range of skills, ages, backgrounds but generally very challenging.<br>
He’s gone for 2 weeks each year and finds the experience so intense that he wouldn’t go for any longer. He needs time to absorb what he learned.</p>
<p>My daughter is at Aspen for the first time this year. She has attended other summer programs, including Heifetz, Bowdoin, QP, ENCORE, Kinhaven, and Apple Hill, and a few other programs. She was accepted to Aspen a few years ago but could not go for various reasons. I know that there have been changes at the festival this year, but because she is a first-timer, none of the changes are meaningful for her. </p>
<p>She is very happy at the festival, which she feels she is now old enough (18) to appreciate and navigate it without feeling overwhelmed. This is the first time she has traveled alone for such a long trip and we had some concerns about logistics, such as how such a petite person would be able to manage two pieces of luggage, including a monstrously large duffel bag, backpack with laptop, and instrument. (Fortunately, a parent we know who stays there all summer with kids volunteered to pick her up from the airport in their car.)</p>
<p>She and friends decided to pre-form a chamber group in which she would play viola, so I had to ship that second instrument separately. A local luthier helped prepare it for shipping by taking down the bridge and soundpost, then UPS-ed it to the Aspen office. She took it to a shop in Aspen to have it set up. I hope they will help her send it back!</p>
<p>The dorm situation for her is three girls in two rooms. Luckily for her, one of the roommates turns out to be a pianist, so my daughter and the other roommate, a violist, can practice in the rooms. My daughter had been advised to sign up in advance for a guaranteed practice room, but she was able to get a refund and use that to join the health center, which has a nice pool and a skating rink. Everyone rides bikes (she did not get one in the “bike lottery” but borrows them from friends.) The festival is somewhat decentralized, but there are free buses that make getting around fairly easy (with some advance planning). I think all of this might be daunting for a younger teen, but she seems to be thriving.</p>
<p>The dorms are very expensive, as is the meal plan. A lot of kids she knows are staying in off-campus apartments, but she is glad to be in the dorms because it gives her more opportunity to meet people. She is thrilled to be seeing old friends from many past summer programs, and is meeting new people outside of the usual network of string players-- apparently she has met a lot of horn players and will be playing a Brahms Horn Trio.</p>
<p>There are four (maybe more) orchestras there; she’s in something called the Festival Orchestra, which rehearses 3 hours/day 4 days/week. Chamber rehearsals are hard to schedule because the players are in different orchestras, but they are managing. Their group was pre-formed (although they still went to auditions) except for the pianist, who was assigned to them. They have a coach, but have not met with him/her because they want to learn the entire piece first.</p>
<p>My daughter is really enjoying lessons with her teacher and is also attending studio classes of other teachers. There are concerts every night; the musical environment is much richer than any program she has attended in the past. </p>
<p>When she arrived there was no wireless in the dorms, but wireless magically appeared a few days ago, so updates are more frequent (there is also a computer center.)</p>
<p>The only problem I can think of is that her session (she signed up for the first session only) ends on Sunday, so I booked her a flight home on that Sunday at 4 PM. Turns out her orchestra concert is at 4 PM. I don’t know how I could have worked around that-- will they let her stay over an extra day, and will I have to pay hundreds of dollars to change her ticket? Since the orchestra assignments are given out days after arrival, there was no way to know this in advance. I guess this is one of the potential problems of attending a large festival-- in the past, summer programs were very cut-and-dry about move-out dates.</p>
<p>One funny incident: she went to an ATM machine in Aspen to withdraw some cashed. She requested $100, and out popped a hundred-dollar bill. I suppose that says something about the very expensive nature of tourist life there (wish we could afford to visit her!)</p>
<p>Hey all, I had a totally amazing time at Aldeburgh last month. Check it out for the future – You won’t be disappointed!</p>
<p>My son is a couple of weeks into a six-week composition program at Brevard. He’s in the college program, and it appears that it’s relatively unstructured (at least compared to the high school program, which he says appears to be more like a summer camp). They have seminar sessions and private lessons (weekly, or maybe twice weekly), which he says are very good. The rest of the time is pretty much free, and there’s not a lot to do, so he’s writing a lot of music. Beginning today, they have a concert of new pieces each Thursday. They can go to all of the concerts of the Festival, and he says many of those are excellent. The composers in the college group range from a couple still in college, to several working on doctorates. There are also two high school composers, who are somewhat separate. The food is fine (much better than BUTI). He’s housed in a camp-style bunkhouse, in a room with three other students. The students under 21 are housed separately, so he’s in a bunkhouse with pianists and singers.</p>
<p>My daughter is spending 4 weeks at Summer String Academy at Indiana Univ. About 70 participants. It’s intense. She is having a good time once she got used to the schedule. There are classes everyday I believe, two weekly lessons, studio recitals every week, two daily practice sessions one of them coached, group sessions, recitals, masterclasses. There are fablous concerts to attend in the evening almost daily, mostly classical music with some jazz and crossover. They get a break after lunch. Mainly hanging out with each other, some games, some sports, eating out. No computer or TV. Two kids in a room on the 8th floor with a beautiful view. Gorgeous campus. Huge. At the beginning, my daughter got lost everywhere she went wiping out her breaks.</p>
<p>My D is at Aspen. This is her first time there. She says its very intense. She is a horn player and the remaining horn players are mostly graduate student or players from other professional orchestras. She has been lucky to have very good teachers. One of the other faculty even offered her free sample lessons and she got to play in the Festival orchestra with him.
She was quite overwhelmed playing with seasoned musicians from the NY Phil and other orchestras.
She lives in the dorm and definitely wants to go back when she is older than 18 as many parties are off limit to her.
She says the dorm checks at unearthly hours are disturbing. She has a packed schedule and wishes the 9am rehearsals started later. Her cell phone service and internet are very flaky and she goes into town to get on the internet.</p>
<p>Our daughter just completed the ten-day vocal camp at Oberlin and loved it. They had over 800 applicants, so just being one of 39 accepted was a big boost for her self-confidence. They provided a combination of individual sessions, vocal master classes, acting training, and a field trip to see El Capitain at the Ohio Light Opera. Her main complaints were the hot dorm and the cell phone coverage. She really bonded well with one professor in particular, and this makes Oberlin one of her top three choices as we gear up for the Fall.</p>
<p>Cousin’s son just spent 4 weeks at New York Summer Music Festival at SUNY-Oneonta. He loved it. He had an extremely busy schedule–he was in 5 or 6 musical groups–and was in a lot of concerts. My cousin said that the festival, which has no auditions for students, attracts some very good players (a number of kids who attend Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music prep divisions), although there is a wide range obviously. She was surprised by how many masterclasses there were given by some very talented musicians and she also said that there is a very strong jazz program. He received private lessons as well and all in all, she said he was thrilled with the experience.</p>
<p>My daughter has risen through the ranks at NYSMF, from camper to junior counselor, and she has always loved her experiences here. It attracted my attention because of its incredible price point – granted, it’s not on a bucolic campus like Interlochen, it’s on a fairly generic college campus – but you could attend for the full 6-week period and pay what other programs charge for shorter periods of time. The instructors you’d be working with are incredible, and there is not a lot of turnover, so you can develop productive relationships with professionals in your field. (And what turnover there is, the replacement staff has also been terrific, especially in the jazz program)</p>
<p>I’m glad it is coming to more peoples’ attention, it’s a great program.</p>
<p>And I have a question!!!</p>
<p>DD came home from two camps this summer, both at excellent conservatories. Both places, her private class teachers told me she would be accepted to either school right now based on her playing this summer.</p>
<p>How seriously do I take these comments???</p>
<p>Have her email the teachers and ask. Do they mean she is good enough or that they personally can promise a place in their studios?</p>
<p>When we were touring music schools for my daughter, the teachers at two different schools hinted rather strongly to us that they use their summer programs as a pre-screening for students. One school said they typically fill at least 25% of their fall UG slots with past campers.
So I would take what they say seriously, but your daughter should still follow up with them, and she should still take the application/audition process dead seriously. Still, congrats to her for her obvious talent and ability!</p>
<p>If it were me, I would take the statement in the context it was given, that the teachers felt that she was playing at a level that would be good enough for admittance to their program based on what they heard that summer. I think it is a positive sign, but it also has to be taken in context. When someone auditions, there are a lot of factors in admittance. For one thing, as good as your DD might be, it could be they only had a couple of slots when she auditioned (if she does) and there were some kids even more stellar who got in…the teacher might wish to teach her, she passes the audition, but there are no open slots in his studio…I think you get the drift of what I am saying:). A teacher cannot know what a particular year is going to be like, it ebbs and flows from everything I have heard. The only other alternative is the teacher is some dodo brain who routinely makes statements like that to make kids feel good, but I have rarely seen anyone like that, teachers tend to be the opposite (they would tell Heifetz he stank, with the idea that would make him get even better <em>lol</em>)</p>
<p>That said, take it as a strong positive on the way she is playing. Having teachers notice you like that is an edge on auditions, and in some cases it can be a strong indicator of getting into a program (note I say it can be, the actual ‘bump’ is kind of an unknown country), because teachers decide who they are going to teach, so if they have a slot and she is known to the teacher and does decent on the audition, she has a stronger chance of getting in (assuming he doesn’t have someone else he knows who is even better, obviously).</p>
<p>I feel I must update you all on my soon-to-be-a-college-freshman son’s first ever summer of Not Doing Anything.*</p>
<p>He has had an absolutely fabulous time and may actually be well-rested for the first time in five plus years. :)</p>
<p>*Okay, nothing formally music related. Of course there were gigs and practicing. But still.</p>
<p>suzukimom:</p>
<p>It depends on the school’s policy. After completing a VP program, D was told that for a certain number of students, their work over the summer would take the place of their audition for admissions. In September, we were officially told by the director of the department (who also runs the summer program) that D did not have to audition based on her voice teacher’s recommendation and his personal expereince working with her and seeing her perform. He said that if she applied to the school, that she would just have to get in academically.</p>
<p>I would probably have D contact those teacher’s to say that she was officially applying and ask if what they said had any bearing on her setting up an official audition.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>uskoolfish, may i ask which school you are referring to?</p>
<p>I can’t speak to koolfish’s post, but the two schools I was referring to were Oklahoma City University and UNT. Oklahoma City was extremely hard-sell, UNT it was more of a polite suggestion.</p>
<p>D attended the musical theatre summer program through NYU Steinhardt. It is part of their vocal performance program and taught by their faculty.</p>