Participants from CVSM summer camps plan two free performances
Cumberland Valley School of Music summer camp attendees will present two free performances during the Chambersburg Old Market Day festivities planned for Saturday, July 16.
Chambersburg YMCA Sam’s Camp children will sing and dance for their audience in the First United Methodist Church Family Life Center, 225 S. Second St., at 10 a.m. According to Diane Miller, a CVSM staff member who directs the camp and provides Zumba dance instruction, the selections are songs that “encourage positive messages to the kids” and promote awareness of music from several countries.
She will be working with Erin C. Smith, the musical director, accompanist Justin Streletz, and Zachary Rotz, who will teach art during the camp to approximately 60 children.
Songs that the children are enjoying
learning this week are selected from: “Watoto Wa Dunia” (“Children of the Earth” in Swahili) by Albrecht & Althouse, “Woke Up This Morning” by C. Gray, Fight Song by Rachel Platten, and Firework by Katy Perry The group is dancing to the following songs: Try Everything, Beat Go Pop. The River and Can’t Stop the Feeling.
“The Old Market Day performance is a great way to culminate the week of camp and gives the children something to work towards, ” Miller said.
According to Paula Hepfer, CVSM Executive Director, Sam’s Camp is done annually in collaboration with the Chambersburg YMCA. She said that local business owner Sam Kessinger, now deceased, originally approached the YMCA in the 1960s and asked the organization to provide a program for under-served children. Kessinger once operated a small grocery store near Hood Street where he became acquainted with the neighborhood children. His program became known as “Sam’s Kids.” CVSM joined forces with the YMCA as Sam’s Music Camp was developed in 1997 by Elizabeth Salter Stahl, a CVSM alumna and current director of Choral Music at Chambersburg Area Senior High School.
CVSM Voice and Drama Camp participants will perform selections from the musical, “The Sound of Music,” at 9 a.m, also in the First United Methodist Church Family Life Center, according to director and CVSM instructor Jeffrey Noll. It is a performance that will represent five days of energetic preparation, he said.
“We will accomplish a whole musical presentation while also offering instruction in vocal and dramatic techniques, individual vocal lessons for each participant, introduction to sight-singing and part singing, experience in memorizing and performing, dramatic games, auditioning tips–all of this in a fun atmosphere,” Noll said.
Noll, the Voice and Drama Camp director since 1997, is being assisted this year by Dick Shoap and Heather Kline, who coach the drama aspects, and Nicola Sussman, who gives dance instruction. Camp runs four hours each day from July 11 through the 17. Up to 45 children, grades 4 through 8, will participate in the camp that culminates in the Old Market Day performance.
“Each year holds special memories with scenes and songs that move me,” Noll said. He added that Old Market Day provides a great venue for his campers to sing for family and friends, and to “be part of a bigger collage of cultural activity.”
