Hello,
If you or your child has done Kinhaven Senior Session, I need your feedback, please! Someone suggested that it is more of a “recreational summer camp with music on the side”. Is this true? I’m looking for a music-intensive experience, where the student will leave becoming a better musician (and help towards college auditions). Not so much a summer recreational camp with music on the side. This will be the summer before senior year so there’s not much time to waste as college applications (and auditions) will start soon after the school year begins. Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
Thank you!
P.S. DS wants to major in music composition and principal instrument is bassoon.
One of my daughters did Kinhaven senior session a while back–but I am pretty sure the program has not changed its focus. It’s definitely a music program–mostly a chamber music program, but there is also a strong orchestra component and some choral music. The recreational aspects are entirely secondary. It may not be one of the most competitive music programs in terms of admissions, and it is not a “practice camp” or a place where you will woodshed and sweat out your solo technique. It is certainly a strong, serious program, with a focus on chamber music.
Thanks so much for your feedback! What does “practice” camp mean? Did you daughter also do a “competitive” camp? How does it compare to this one? This is my first go-round, so I need advice on the pros and cons of each type of camp.
Thanks again!
A practice camp is a place like Meadowmount where you go to do serious woodshedding and the students are expected to practice for an enforced amount of hours a day. Now that I think of it, I’m coming from a strings perspective. Woodwind players are probably too sane to have practice camps. My daughter who went to Kinhaven Senior is a string player and ended up not going into music, but it was more because of some physical issues she had. I have another daughter who went onto conservatories and is starting a professional career now–she is also a strings player. She went to Kinhaven Junior for 5 sessions (loved it–many of her best friends are kids she met there years ago.) It could be the perfect place for your student–also, at least as far as know from my experience in the past, the wind teachers and students there are really top-notch. 
Thanks very much for your feedback!
You want a program that is specifically for composition at this stage.
If composition is the goal you might want to look at a program like Bowdoin.
No Bowdoin is very competitive and generally has older composers. BUTI, BoCo, Yellow Barn, Walden are all good choices and there are a few others.
I’ve known high schoolers who went to Bowdoin, but maybe there was some exception. In my experience, Yellowbarn is extremely competitive.
Yes, Yellow Barn is probably the most exclusive program of all of them.
It may depend on the instrument and composition versus instrumentalists.
Btw, Caroline Shaw, the composer, went to Kinhaven when she was in high school. "When she was 14, Shaw spent a summer at the Kinhaven Music School in Vermont, where she played her first chamber music. Working on Mozart’s “Dissonance” String Quartet No. 19, she knew, “this is what I’m going to do.” (from a newspaper clipping…I just learned this because my daughter was performing in a concert with a premiere of one of Shaw’s pieces today and my daughter mentioned it.) Shaw did her undergrad in violin performance.
Thanks for sharing @glassharmonica! Thanks also to @compmom and @SpiritManager for your feedback!
As mentioned above,Caroline Shaw was 14, and not a rising senior, and also a violinist at the time, not a composer. At this stage the priority is getting a piece played and recorded for application time.