PORT TOWNSEND — Music lovers, teachers and students from across and beyond the North Olympic Peninsula got together for a free concert Friday, filling the air with the sound of violins, cellos, brass, drums and applause.
It was the finale of this summer’s YEA Music! Camp, a pay-what-you-can experience for youngsters in fifth through 12th grades at Fort Worden State Park.
Educators, retired or on their summer breaks — including retired Port Angeles High School orchestra director Ron Jones — made it happen with help from donors.
“The Strings I group — weren’t they amazing?” camp leader Daniel Ferland asked as the crowd of about 100 clapped.
The joy of this camp, he added, was seeing the progress that students have made during each of three week-long camps held in late June, late July and mid-August.
Ferland also told the crowd that local music teachers are “doing amazing things” during the school year, complicated as it is by the pandemic.
The YEA Music! program is meant to support local schools, he said. Ferland hopes to see music and art taught daily; they are “very essential for the development of the kids.”
Lilly Montgomery, 19, also took the microphone between musical numbers. A violinist for nine years, she urged the adults in the crowd to encourage the children in their lives to play instruments.
“Learning [to play] is one of the best things,” she said.
“Music is a universal language.”
For information about other YEA — Youth Education in Arts — activities, see YEAmusic.org.
________
Jefferson County senior reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3509 or durbanidelapaz@peninsuladaily news.com.
Alto saxophonist Elijah Hill, 15, of Port Townsend didn’t let his mask interfere with playing in the YEA Music! Camp finale concert, which drew about 100 listeners to Fort Worden on Friday. (Diane Urbani de la Paz/Peninsula Daily News)
