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[Back to index of September 2007 articles] Parish Partners Team Up to Make Music By Lucy Chumbley Three parishes in the Diocese of Washington have pooled their resources for the second year in a row to make summer sing for 22 city kids. In early August, St. Dunstan’s, Bethesda, St. John’s, Lafayette Square and St. Stephen and the Incarnation joined forces to put on a tuition-free music camp for third to seventh graders, with help from a grant from D.C. Children's Charities. “It’s really meant to be an opportunity for kids to have fun, but also to do music and learn some things and try some things they may not have tried before,” said Cindy DeDakis, director of the Chorister Academy at St. John’s, Lafayette Square. The partnership began, DeDakis said, because St. Dunstan’s wanted to hold a music camp for inner city kids, “but they’re not in town. And St. John’s is in town, but doesn’t have a lot of good spaces.” As many campers live near St. Stephen’s, that church was used as a pick up and drop off point, and also hosted the closing ceremony and reception. An additional benefit for St. John’s, DeDakis said, is that she has been able to recruit children from the camp for her Chorister Academy, an after-school outreach program. On Thursday of the week-long camp, the children arrive just after 9 a.m., spilling out of their bus and into the nave at St. Dunstan’s, where music director Julie Vidrick Evans guides them through some warm up exercises. After some energetic stretching and singing, the children split into three groups – red, yellow and blue – to work on handchimes, singing and composition. In a cozy room in the church’s undercroft, Marianna Judy’s composition class – the fifth and sixth graders – are putting the finishing touches on a song they have recorded: “Grandma’s Magic Electric Guitar.” “The poetry is by Calef Brown,” said Judy, an elementary music teacher and composer in Montgomery County Schools. “I gave them about four different choices of his very rhythmic poetry and they decided they wanted to do this one.” Composing is all about choices, she explained, so the children got to choose the style of the music, the instrument parts and the melody. They also composed a few lines of additional lyrics to fill in some gaps. “What I like is you see kids get really excited about the process,” she said. “They generate all these ideas and I try and put it together for them.” The children crowd around Judy’s keyboard, conferring about the song’s final embellishments. They insert a flourish at the end of a phrase (diddle-diddle-do), a guitar solo and a thump and a scream after the lyric, “The band is made up of kids half her age/ They all start screaming when she jumps off the stage.” “We need a dancer,” Amanda decides, as the group nears the end of its recording work. “Have David do it.” David has not been joining in with the singing, but bobs his head happily in the back row and demonstrates some of his moves, which the others try to copy. “Should we do the electric guitar at the end or should we just fade it?” asks Jakob, who has been playing an enthusiastic air guitar throughout the session. “Do the guitar!” the group decides. “Can I go get my air guitar from the closet?” asks Eva, crossing the room and opening an invisible door. “Here you go – my electric guitar,” Sterling proclaims, grabbing a sofa cushion and wielding it like Jimi Hendrix. They leap up in front of Judy as their song, now complete, plays through from the beginning, singing, dancing and rocking solos on their imaginary instruments. Elsewhere, DeDakis’s class is learning how to sing and walk in step at the same time; processing from the back of the nave while singing “Ah Poor Bird.” “Use your eyes to stay together physically and your ears to stay together musically,” DeDakis says, as her seventh graders creep carefully toward the altar. Later, in the choir loft, Evans demonstrates some dramatic organ playing – scary “Halloween favorites,” as well as “Here Comes the Bride” and a spirited “Happy Birthday.” The campers each take a turn at the organ, sitting on the edge of the bench to reach the pedals. Then it’s off to karate and art classes, where they chop the air and create yellow camp T-shirts for the final day’s field trip, to Great Falls and the Alexandria Torpedo Factory. “The camp takes a lot of energy,” DeDakis admits. “But I think it’s a really good example of three parishes cooperating to do something good.” [Back to index of September 2007 articles]
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