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Piano camp teaches budding musicians
Students compose at Summer Piano Camp
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Music at summer camp isn’t anything new.
But at Summer Piano Camp, no one sits around a campfire. And you won’t hear “Kumbaya.”
Instead, campers sit at pianos, composing their own music and performing Beethoven.
The camp, which wrapped up Friday with a recital, was a joint effort of the Youngstown State University’s Dana School of Music and Valley Christian Schools’ Lewis Center.
Eight third- to-eighth-graders participated with varying levels of piano and music knowledge, said Sean Baran, a piano instructor, who ran the camp.
“For some of them, this was first time they’ve ever been at a piano,” Baran said. “One is self-taught.”
He was referring to Scott Conner, 14, an eighth-grader at the Lewis Center.
“I learned some with a piano book,” Scott said.
He learned by doing. He learned about chords by playing
them to identify those that sounded good.
When Scott was 7 or 8, he started composing.
He just played the piano, trying out notes, chords and rhythms. If he liked what he heard, he wrote it down. If not, he kept trying.
Scott believes he’s written about 60 pieces. For Friday’s recital, he performed one of them, “Adventure in C Minor.”
The fast pace of it reminded Scott of an adventure.
He briefly took piano lessons, but the lessons weren’t for him.
“My mom agreed,” Scott said. “She thought if I learn some other way, I might lose some of my ability to compose.”
He enjoys playing but doesn’t envision it as anything more than a hobby.
At the same time Baran was directing the younger students, he ran a two-week workshop for YSU piano majors. Those students performed at Friday’s recital too.
Students played together on one piano or two. It’s something they don’t often get a chance to do.
“Playing piano is normally such a solitary act,” Baran said.
He said he’d been considering some kind of a piano camp for awhile when Sara Reichard, Lewis Center director, approached him about one for her students.
Students learn in Dana’s piano lab. They wear headphones and can only hear themselves and the instructor.
Baran hopes the camp becomes an annual event.
Delaney Pallo, 13, an eighth-grader at Canfield Village Middle School, plans to continue with piano after the camp.
“We have a piano at home, and my dad tried to teach me to play,” she said.
Delaney already knew how to read music – she learned in choir – but the camp intensified her interest in piano.
“You can do anything with it,” she said.
Baran brought in members of the Dana faculty to help with the camp.
One of them demonstrated something called “prepared piano.” She opened up the piano and plucked its strings.
Delaney hadn’t thought about less-traditional piano playing.
“You can get different sounds from the different strings,” she said. “It’s manipulatable.”