I have been coming to CAMMAC as a chamber music coach and orchestra conductor for some 25 years.  I remember well when I came back to teach for my second summer thinking:  I had better lessen my expectations… Because my experience the previous year, my first, was so positive, so full of friendship, wonderful people and wonderful music – how could it be as good this summer?   With the same intensity of warmth and friendliness, the same satisfaction of seeing people of all ages learning, growing, making new friends?  But my second summer was just as intensely positive and rewarding.  So we keep coming back, year after year, the faculty, and so do the participants.

 

What are some of Cammac’s features that make it so uniquely rewarding and fun?

 

The first thing you notice as a professional musician working and playing with the amateurs or kids at CAMMACis that they all love music deeply, a love that’s very much alive and which CAMMACitself nurtures and develops.  At CAMMACmusic is a force which unites, energizes, stimulates.

Another thing that’s very unique is the lack of competitiveness; this allows people of all abilities to relax and just have a good time with what they love.  No competition, no stress, just the joy of making music in various ways.

Another striking feature is that (perhaps due to this competition free zone!) players of all levels seem to have an equally good time, to learn a lot and to have much fun.

The constant interaction of children and teenagers and adults is also a lovely and important feature of Cammac.  In one of the first groups I ever coached two of the players were 15 and 82!

 

Fun – oh yes, it’s just enormous fun to spend a week or two by a beautiful lake, with congenial people, with families, making music of all kinds, meeting new people and revisiting old friends in an environment that’s friendly, safe and full of joy.

 

So there is an ‘ethos’ which defines what CAMMACis: that through music it really is possible to create a more ideal society, in which generosity, love, open-heartedness, positive communication, patience, energy and even wisdom are all in the foreground.

 

If you want to play and explore music in such an atmosphere, come to Cammac!  I’ve yet to meet anyone who wasn’t both thrilled and moved by it.

 

Mark Latham

Music Director, New Hampshire Philharmonic Orchestra

Director of Orchestra and Adjunct Professor of

Conducting, Violin and Viola, University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Violinist, Aryaloka Quartet