The third part of Music Scholarship student Hannah Ost‘s summer diary at the French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts in New York…

I’ve just finished at camp and have so much to write about. It’s been so busy, I’ve had no time at all to blog! Here it is, my second session at camp, which brought lots of challenging hurdles to overcome.

I mentioned in my last diary entry that I was going to be the Musical Director and play piano in the pit band for the show Junie B Jones. Well, only 50% of that turned out to be true; I was the Musical Director for the show, but since we ended up using a drummer for the show as well, I decided to conduct and somebody else stepped in, to fill my shoes as pianist. It was a real learning experience to conduct both the musicians and the performers together, especially seeing as the performers were so young – the youngest was nine years old! Myself and my Co-MD, Nicole, taught the full score in what was effectively 24 hours (12 days of 2 hour rehearsals) and the show was a huge hit with parents, staff and campers alike. Definitely a highlight from my time at French Woods.

Again, I taught a lot of voice lessons and it was great to see how much the students learnt in just three, half-hour sessions.

That’s all for this post, I’ll post an update with all the details from my third and final session at camp soon!

Read the previous extract here.