(HUDSON, N.Y.) – For the last three weeks, nineteen musicians have gathered at Club Helsinki Hudson every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoon from noon to 3pm to play jazz, New Orleans music, and African drumming and percussion.
Ordinarily, that wouldn’t be so unusual – after all, Helsinki Hudson is a music venue where jazz is often on the menu. But these musicians all happen to be in grades 4, 5, and 6 at the Montgomery C. Smith Intermediate School of the Hudson City School District, where most of them study instrumental music under the direction of music teacher and band director Scott Vorwald, who leads the four-week Helsinki Band Camp, which concludes its 2013 summer session on Thursday, August 1.
The camp, which began in 2012, is free, and students interested in participating sign up at school with Vorwald. This year, the campers number nineteen, including 14 girls and five boys. In future summers, Helsinki Hudson hopes to expand the size of the band camp in order to accommodate all those interested.
“I wanted to bring local kids into the fold at Helsinki,” says Helsinki co-owner Deborah McDowell, “so I reached out to Hudson city schools. As luck would have it, I met Scott, who is a magically dedicated teacher and musician himself, with a funk band, Ooblek, that has since graced the Helsinki stage on a couple of occasions.”
Luke Marciano, club manager at Helsinki and a former Hebrew School teacher at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire temple in Great Barrington, Mass., assists in the program. Campers take group lessons on a variety of instruments, as well as classes from the Kuumba Dance and Drum Ensemble in African drumming and percussion. Greg and Elena Mosley, who founded Columbia County-based Operation Unite 18 years ago with the idea to focus on cultural arts and education, are teaching the children African drumming along with Vorwald and Marciano.
“Many students in the district cannot afford to rent instruments, and there are not nearly enough serviceable instruments or staff to provide instrumental instruction to all interested students. Band Camp has reached out in the past for instrument donation, and we are still reaching out,” says McDowell.
Running a summer camp is nothing new for Helsinki co-owner Marc Schafler, who runs the daily operations at Helsinki, overseeing the music venue, the restaurant, and private bookings in the ballroom. For many years, Schafler – who designed and built Helsinki Hudson — owned and ran Camp Natchez, a sleepaway camp in Ancram, N.Y. “It warms my heart whenever children are about,” says Schafler. “To watch the parents dropping the kids off at Helsinki Hudson for a safe and instructive camp day makes me very happy.”
Attendees of Helsinki Band Camp will perform at the Hudson Music Festival at Helsinki Hudson on Friday, August 9, and will march in the International Parade during the Hudson Black Arts and Culture Festival on Saturday, August 10, at 2pm.
“If there are teachers like Scott in the Hudson City School System, Hudson needs to hold on tightly to them and not let them go,” says McDowell. “His love of teaching and his dedication to helping children is inspiring. I understand he may be heading to the high school in the future. With art programs being slashed, it is so important we stand up in support of tremendously talented teachers like Scott. The kids love him. Our children deserve it.”