Al-Kamandjati Summer Camp 2009, al-Fara'a, the West Bank (part 2)

http://historyviolins.blogspot.com/2009/07/al-kamandjati-summer-camp-2009-al-faraa.html

The al-Kamandjati Summer Music Days camp came to a close a few days ago. As the camp went on we got a chance to see more and more of the students performing, which was wonderful.

I had a chance to interview Peter Sulski, the artistic director of the summer camp. Sulski started coming to the Middle East with the Apple Hill Chamber Players in 1996 and became Ramzi Aburedwan's teacher and friend. "It's been an incredible ride," he says about the experience.

"I think the summer camp is an incredible social opportunity to be around each other and to have lots of role models even for five full days.. to experience a real bump up in their growth. It's a chance for them to feel really legitimate in the field of music. As a student even in america you can feel outside the culture of music."

The first picture here is one of the students performing Dowland's "Flow my Teares".

One of the popular workshops was the oriental percussion workshop, which had 10-15 children performing on native Arab drums.

Ramzi Aburedwan, the founder of al-Kamandjati, plays oud and drums in addition to the viola; here is him performing for the children.

Robert "Dobbs" Hartshone has been coming to the West Bank for the last twenty years giving performances for children here, as he does around the world in other places like Afghanistan. He performed a Bach cello suite and a narrated piece in Arabic about a beaver that falls in love with a tree. The kids loved it.

The final concert was very long and had performances by nearly every child. The orchestra performed a arrangement of the slow movement from Beethoven's 7th Symphony.

The last piece was a song from Pink Floyd's album "The Wall."

The experience was very educational for the teachers as well. Drew Balch, a native of London and the viola teacher, talked about his experiences with the people here. "It's the one thing you can't really be told in stories in the media. Now I've met these people face to face, heard their stories and I've become involved in their stories now, and it's just so much more real."

Al-Kamandjati Summer Camp 2009, al-Fara'a, the West Bank (part 1)

http://historyviolins.blogspot.com/2009/06/al-kamandjati-summer-camp-2009-al-faraa.html

One of the seminal teaching events for al-Kamandjati of the year is their summer camp, which is a seven-day music festival for their students around the West Bank. Due to the difficulties of moving students from one town to another, this is a chance for all the students to meet and perform with each other. The camp is taking place in the village of al-Fara'a, close to the city of Nablus.



The mornings involve private lessons for all the students. Many volunteer teachers from all over the world came to teach in the summer camp on various instruments.



There are two orchestras in the camp; a junior orchestra made up of string students, and a full orchestra made up of the more advanced players.


Here's me teaching clarinet to one of my students. I'm also teaching composition to a few students; for the younger ones I am teaching them basic writing skills and for the older ones I'm trying to introduce them to counterpoint and tonal harmony.


During the afternoons we have a choir session where the students can all sing together. This is us right before we all sang a song by the famous Arab singer Fayrouz. We also have afternoon outdoor concerts made of up performances by children and faculty.



During the afternoon they have several workshops they can get involved in, including composition, notation, improvisation, and so on.


It's really interesting to see how contemporary classical music is fitting into this; we're doing this piece called "Self-Portrait" which involves a set of boxes on stage with notes on them; it's a bit hard to explain. We're also doing Riley's "In C" and Reich's "Clapping Music."


Here's the improvisation workshop. The children took to it really quickly!


There are also small chamber groups involved in performances.


One of the centerpieces of the al-Kamandjati program is the Oriental Ensemble, a group of performers playing on native Palestinian instruments. The group has been essential in bridging the gap between Western classical music and Palestinians; it was interesting to see that they teach the children Palestinian songs in solfege. Here's them performing at one of the nightly concerts.



The faculty is involved with performances- here's a few playing the Mozart Flute Quartet.




More next time.