By Chloe Elder
The Stringendo School for Strings, founded in 2000, is dedicated to giving young musicians the tools and experience they need to better their craft and become serious instrumentalists.
The summer camp at Palm Beach Atlantic University, which ends Friday, provides intensive 9-hour days of music, music, and more music. For the 45 accepted students this year, the three-week session costs $850.
It’s “a practice camp,” says the director and founder of the school, Patrick Clifford. Students are given the tools to understand and tackle complex music on their string instruments. Every student has at least four hours of uninterrupted practice time in a day, a time that’s guided for younger students.
“A big thrust of the academy is to train how to practice,” explains Clifford, who is an assistant professor of violin and viola at PBAU. He breaks down this training into five categories: bow exercises, finger exercises, scales and arpeggios, and repertoire.
Specified instruction based on these categories is given in the lessons throughout the day. A concentration on solfège and theory, separated into three levels of progress, and reviews of scales and arpeggios for the more advanced students begins the morning. Emphasis on bow technique and finger exercises is highlighted in different classes throughout the rest of the day.
The students range in age from around 5 to 15, and all are already impressive players. In the youngest age group (around 5-7 years), students are clapping syncopated rhythms, playing in unison, and learning bow control.
Their talent always impresses Susan Snow, a teacher at the Stringendo academy, even if they are “noodling” around too much. “This is way beyond what most kids their age are doing,” said Snow, who is a preparatory instructor of violin.
Studio classes, in which one teacher brings all his or her students together to practice performing, are designed to give each student a high level of confidence in front of an audience. Experience like this sets Stringendo apart from other music academies, said violinist Juliet Schreiber, 13, of Lake Worth, who has been coming to Stringendo since first grade.
“We get a lot more practice [performing] and it helps a lot when you have to do auditions or competitions…and you don’t get as nervous,” she said.
Later that day in her private lesson with Clifford, Juliet learns that she will in fact be performing the piece she has been preparing, Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 4, in the next day’s studio class. Clifford talks to her about the correct communication of the music, and that playing exactly what’s on the page is only getting 75 percent of the way there.
“Music is a language and it’s a communication with people and we’re communicating an idea, feeling, or an emotion,” Clifford said, “So we have to always come back to that and work out ‘How do I perform in front of people?’ and get comfortable with that.”
Each week, there are three student concerts, but only the one on Friday is open to the public.
Students say they get a lot out of this structured and serious regime. “It’s more work than fun, really,” said Tristan Gordon, a 14-year-old violist from West Palm Beach, smiling. “But you know it’s so worth it.”
Clifford said the camp only seeks out students “who want to be doing it.”
“Finding the kids who enjoy doing it and then giving them the environment and the opportunity to really learn how to do it from an early age allows them to gain the skills to be able to use that language to express themselves,” he said.
Tristan also says he has a lot of friends who attend the camp with him. Throughout the day, even during complicated lessons, students are smiling and seem to be genuinely enjoying themselves and the company of each other. Learning an instrument can be a very “isolated” activity, Clifford says, but at Stringendo there’s camaraderie.
“It’s just part of what everybody does. It’s very natural and it’s an encouraging thing for a very solitary type of activity,” he said.
Whether the students’ instruments still have stickers on them to show where the fingers go or they’ve been playing for half a dozen years, pupils at the academy consider themselves real musicians. They have each decided to make the commitment to music and are taking serious steps to improve.
“You know have to put in the work in order to get the output,” Juliet said.
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Chloe Elder, a violinist and graduate of the Dreyfoos School of the Arts, is a student at The American University of Paris.
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For more information about the Stringendo School for Strings, call 561-803-2407 or visit www.stringendoschoolforstrings.com.