My Weekend at Summer Camp

[Bruce McCaskey]

An incidental attendance of a Seattle area art show a few months ago and a chance encounter with a harp maker while there has lead to some new experiences recently. My wife had been looking for an instrument to play but not settled on anything until she encountered the harp maker and tried his instruments. Much to my surprise we left the art show with a new harp in hand. She subsequently started taking lessons and a week ago attended a harp concert featuring Gráinne Hambly & William Jackson on their "Masters of the Celtic Harp" tour.

 

I have to admit that until a week ago I knew nothing of Gráinne or William so when the concert started I expected to hear only harps. I found I enjoyed the music though, and was completely sold on the experience when Gráinne pulled out a nice Jeffries Anglo and played it while William accompanied her on harp for three tune sets. I spoke with her afterwords and told her the concertina portion was so nice I would have attended for it alone. It wasn't until the next day that I did a little Internet research and learned that Gráinne has won All-Ireland on both the Harp and Concertina.

 

My wife enjoyed the concert so much that she decided to attend a harp retreat a few days later in Oregon that featured Gráinne and William along with other talented teaching staff. I went too, but my role was that of driver and porter. It was nice to be at a music camp for a change where I wasn't the one attending classes and could just relax and enjoy the setting. Located above the 4,000 foot level in the mountains of Oregon and near a large lake, the area was very inviting and sitting outside in the woods among the tall trees was very relaxing. I didn't want to impact the harp events by playing my concertina indoors, so I spent several hours playing outside in the woods near the camp and enjoying the blue skies and comfortable temperatures.

 

I was surprised when chipmunks started coming around as I played. I found they seemed to be attracted to the lower pitched reeds (some came very near my feet) but were inclined to run when I played something that fell mostly on the higher pitched reeds. Deer were also accepting, three came by feeding as I played and spent a few minutes about 50 feet from me without seeming to pay any attention - I was playing slow airs at the time, so maybe they found the music soothing. Now before anyone starts thinking I've made some sort of discovery regarding the concertina's power over animals, I should suggest that since this is a camp area that is well used each summer, I imagine they are quite used to people and odd sounds.

 

Surprisingly I was quite popular with the people at the camp too. While I made a point to play outside and away from the harp instruction, many of the attendees came by one or two at a time to listen to me and ask questions. The only dark cloud for me was that I totally and completely fell apart when unexpectedly asked to play for the entire camp during their evening entertainment show. I found myself facing an "audience" that included an All-Ireland winner and I was suddenly quite nervous and well familiar tunes became uncertain. The only silver lining was that very few knew anything about the concertina and so most didn't realize just how poorly I'd performed and they were quite complimentary afterwords.

 

I was even invited to be included in the harp camp photo, but declined because I felt I'd be out of place there. Still, it was a fun weekend and my wife really enjoyed it. Oh, by the way, apparently harps are a little like potato chips and concertinas - people like to have more than one. Just two months with the harp and my wife has two now, and I spoke with people at the camp that had three or four - some costing over $10,000.

 

Edited to add a hyphen

Edited June 16, 2010 by Bruce McCaskey