Day 12: Come Along, You Belong
Warm-ups for our last full day of camp were led by Mr. Brown. One of the singers’ favorite warm-ups that Mr. Brown traditionally leads is “the crawl.” We had our final musicianship classes in the morning, and Eric and Ken’s class was so excited to learn about equal temperament and justified tuning. Many of them said it was a highlight from their whole time at camp, even though they described it as “having their brains broken.” Anna and Kailamae’s class had a music history lesson on the major eras of Western classical music.
Each group of singers is hard at work getting ready for tomorrow’s concert. Joyful Voices had their dress rehearsal in the room where the concert will be and practiced not just their songs, but also the lines they’ll say to the audience about the different songs.
After cheese and pepperoni pizza for lunch, we sang the PEBCC Happy Birthday song to Counselor Ken and campers showed off their spirit day outfits! Today’s spirit day was Inside Out Day, and campers were very creative with both wearing their clothes inside-out and dressing like characters from the beloved Pixar movies. In third place we had Hawk, with Badger in second and Trout in first place!
At free time, campers had their last Turtle Pond adventures, having a blast with swimming and boating. We made our last friendship bracelets, lanyards, bead animals, and key chains. We also decorated banners to direct their adults to the camp concert tomorrow morning! The banners are very bright and creative and campers can’t wait for people to see them tomorrow. Camp Joyful Voices also learned how to waltz!
We had another long recital so that we had enough time to hear our many wonderful student performers show off what they’ve been learning in their voice lessons. We had performances from Bebe, Kade, Josie, Laura, June, Nico, Sarah, Ilana, Anjali, Stella, and Loki. We also heard a fun aria from Voice Teacher Alice accompanied by Eric. To close out our final recital, Accompanist Kymry impressed us all by playing a piece by Chopin on the piano with the left hand in the original key and the right hand a half step lower — yowch!
We built our own delicious burritos for dinner and had churros for dessert, and then campers headed off to evening rehearsals. Finally, we had our traditional final evening activity — closing campfire! Each camper and staff member had the opportunity to contribute a wood chip to the fire and dedicate their chip to their favorite part of camp. We also sang some favorite choir camp songs and everyone got to have a s’more! Campers regaled us with their favorite memories from the last two weeks, shouted out their mentors and mentees, thanked their counselors and musicianship teachers, and expressed appreciation for their conductors.
After lots of hugs and goodnight songs, campers are snug in bed for one last night at choir camp. Many campers are sad to be leaving camp tomorrow, but they’re also excited to show off what they’ve been working on at the concert tomorrow!