This morning I am reflecting on a really important initiative of my early career, The Palmyra Bluegrass String Camp. I began teaching in Palmyra PA in early 1987 immediately after I graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in December 1986. I was charged with developing a string program in Palmyra schools and while there were a few string players scattered throughout the school district, there was plenty of room for growth and development in the district. I went to work at recruiting and teaching beginning string players starting in the third grade and had a very successful first year or two. During that time, I was thoughtful about seeking out professional development opportunities and making connections in Central Pennsylvania both as a string educator and as a performer on my violin.
Sometime in 1989 or 1990, Windham Hill Artists, the Modern Mandolin Quartet came to Palmyra to perform as part of the Authors and Artists Series and I was really taken with the sound of the mandolins and the virtuosity of the members of the group. They were invited to come back the following year and do a residency with my orchestra students and we all spent about a week together. That residency is chronicled at this link. As a result of that residency and particularly hearing Mike Marshall play bluegrass licks during the week, I hatched an idea to begin a summer day camp that would be focused on teaching my traditional string students principles and styles of bluegrass music. I sought approval from the school district and, after a few meetings, was given the green light to start the camp.
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Throughout the spring of 1991 I spent a great deal of time planning the camp. This included finding a group of bluegrass professionals that would serve as the faculty. I very quickly found a local banjo player, Nev Jackson, who grabbed on to the idea and was an enthusiastic partner right from the beginning. Nev recommended mandolinist Henry Koretsky and fiddler Ken Gehret as other potential faculty members. Everyone agreed when invited and I knew that we were going to be ready to go. My role in the camp was to administrate everything and serve as the string education liaison. I would be the conduit between the bluegrass professionals and the string students. The camp was open to all string students in the school district and their ages ranged from 5th grade all the way to high school seniors.
The first year, we had strong enrollment. I don't remember the exact numbers but we definitely had enough to constitute a “critical mass.” As part of the camp we taught basic beginning fiddle tunes. Songs like Boil the Cabbage Down, Old Joe Clark, Soldier’s Joy, Sailor's Hornpipe, and other bluegrass standards. We made all bluegrass instruments available to every student. Some students chose to remain on their major instrument, primarily violinists. But we also taught students to play mandolin, banjo, guitar, and bass, regardless of their traditional string background. Obviously, violists and cellists were most inclined to try new instruments as part of the experience. This would definitely have fallen into the category of experiential learning. Our students were working each day individually and in small ensembles to learn how to not only play the tunes, but also how to interact in a bluegrass band.
Another exciting element of that first year was bringing in a guest artist to perform a concert and Q&A session. That first year, we were excited to book Mark O'Connor to come and give a solo concert on violin, mandolin, and guitar. The concert on Wednesday night of the camp was absolutely virtuosic and stunning. And, the Q&A session the following day was inspirational. While Mark was already a well-known name in the bluegrass community, he was still a relatively unknown force in our community in Central PA. Everyone was stunned by his virtuosity and technique, including myself. (Mark went on to found one of the most successful fiddle camps in history which debuted in 1994.) I was also thrilled to get to spend quite a bit of personal time with Mark that week. Following his concert, I remember taking him out for dinner and then sitting in my car talking about life and music till almost 3:00 a.m. It was a really formative conversation for me.
All in all, that first year was a tremendous success and I felt like my students gained so much as musicians from the experience. Not only did they have their hands on their instruments for an extra week in the summer, but they also learned a new style and even some beginning improvisation. Many of them learned a second instrument as well. This was an all-around success.
We began almost immediately planning for a second summer. For the second year, we used basically the same model, but everything was just a little bit bigger. We had more students the second year and opened up the camp to community members. Interestingly, the local Mennonite community in Central Pennsylvania got excited about the camp and we had several attendees that year from their community. It was really exciting to bring these folks in to interact with our students. I loved the exchange of culture and ideas that occurred as a result. We kept the same staff for the second year and added my sister, Stephanie Everett as another string education liaison. Her experience, playing technique, and perspective proved to be invaluable in the summer of 1992. Our guest artist that year was Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver. They provided a very different experience than the Mark O’Connor performance the prior year. But it was no less impactful. They brought a much more traditional bluegrass sensibility to the stage and also wowed the audience with their virtuosity. By the second summer, the camp was really rolling and folks in the Palmyra community grew to know our camp as a powerful force in music education that would happen each summer.
Sometime late in the school year, I received an offer to become the Orchestra Director at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, MD, outside of Washington DC and accepted the opportunity. We went ahead and ran the camp during my last summer living in Palmyra. Again, it was super successful and lots of students gained a great deal as part of this music education experience. I remember many bittersweet goodbyes at the end of camp that year.
After camp that summer I moved to Bowie, MD in the DC suburbs and decided I would keep running the camp for at least one more year, planning from a distance and heading back to Palmyra the next summer for the camp itself. I booked the Nashville Bluegrass Band as our guest artist for the summer of 1993. The 3rd year went off without a hitch, but I knew it was time to turn my full attention to my new school and community in Maryland.
I left the camp in the able hands of Nev Jackson to keep things going after I left. My knowledge of the camp after moving away from Palmyra is a little bit murky. (I will amend this document if folks share reflections and update to be as accurate as possible.) I do know that the camp went on for a few more years after I left and there are literally hundreds of string students who were impacted for the rest of their lives by the experience.
I know that I gained so much as a teacher from the entire experience of the Palmyra Bluegrass String Camp. I learned about collaborating with performers, engaging students with ideas that are new to them, and administrative and organizational skills. You must remember that personal computers were still in their infancy in the early 90s and while I had a primitive database and word processing, I didn't have nearly the organizational tools in my PC that we have today. I remember renting a small retail space on the first floor of the Main Street house I lived in. I had music and papers spread all over the floor as I tried to organize the camp for each upcoming summer. It was a huge undertaking. But, it is certainly one that I will never regret.
If you have reflections of the Palmyra Bluegrass String Camp you would like to share, please leave them in the comments or message me directly. I would be glad to add your reflections to this post.
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