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.
Reporting in from the French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts as part of Camp America, the second entry in the diary of Music Scholar Hannah Ost…
Moving onto this session, I am the Musical Director for a show called Junie B Jones and along with my other MD, we have taught just over half the show in twelve one-hour rehearsals! Our dress rehearsal is next week; I am busy learning the piano score for the show as I will be playing in the pit for that show too.
It’s been almost a month since I landed in the US so I thought I would update you on what I have been doing at French Woods Festival here in New York!