LAKE CRESCENT — Camp Heebie Jeebies was hot this year — as in both the mercury and the music.
The intense week of jazz, with young campers playing in seven “trad,” or traditional, jazz bands and three big bands, brought musicians from Washington state, Montana and Canada together on Lake Crescent’s north shore earlier this month.
The 15-year-old program drew a full enrollment of 70 teenagers — about half of whom came from the North Peninsula thanks to Jazz in the Olympics Society youth coordinator Bud Critchfield — starting July 4, a fitting day since jazz is an American-born art form.
The camp, named for Louis Armstrong and the Hot Five’s 1926 single, “Heebie Jeebies,” originated in Whitefish, Mont., a 16-hour-plus train ride away from Western Washington.
But five years ago, Critchfield talked the camp organizers into moving it to Lake Crescent.
Heebie Jeebies has flourished since, thanks to its proximity to Port Angeles and to Chilliwack, B.C., camp director Karla West, of Whitefish, said recently.
“Both of those areas have highly successful youth programs that focus on traditional jazz,” she added.
Students revel in camp
Sarah Winslow, 18, came to camp after a busy senior year at Port Townsend High School.
She was on the swim team instead of in band — and missed her music.
When she did play in her high school band, Winslow said it kept her on track and made the, well, boring things at school more bearable.
At camp it felt good, she added, to be back in the swing and to be part of something big.
She played trombone in a trad band, did some singing and enjoyed watching the campers who got into the swing-dancing class.
Swing dance instruction was a new offering at Heebie Jeebies this summer, and West said about a third of the campers tackled some steps with Jimmy Millard, the dance teacher from Whitefish.
“They really got into it,” she said, though the dancers could have done more with more space.
Camp David Jr., with its nine lakefront acres, lodge and cabins, was awash in rhythm July 4 through 10, with big-band and Dixieland rehearsals, improv classes and noontime and evening concerts put on by students and their mentors.
This year’s Heebie Jeebies faculty included luminaries from the Peninsula: big-band instructor Sanford Feibus, saxophone and improvisation teacher Craig Buhler and guitarist Chuck Easton.
Josh Mullins, 13, of Port Angeles came to play alto sax, clarinet and piano at the lake and and returned home, he said, with a new handle on jazz improvisation, while Audrey U’Ren, 17, of Port Ludlow discovered a whole new set of possibilities at camp.
‘Never done jazz before’
“I had never done jazz before,” said U’Ren, a clarinet and alto sax player headed into her senior year at Chimacum High School.
Playing this free-spirited music “was really fun; I actually enjoyed it.”
And though U’Ren didn’t dance, she swam. Lake Crescent was “freezing,” but she said it felt good amid the heat wave that hit during Heebie Jeebies week.
Other Peninsula jazz players from high and middle schools on the north Peninsula include Victoria Cary, Cheyanne Pope, Matt Grey, Peter and Matt Harker, Erin Henninger, Brenna Moore and Marley Iredale of Sequim, April Allan, Erin Beard, Amber Wood, James Hayden, Jeffrey Mordecai-Smith, Tim O’Keefe, Cole and Carter Urnes, Luis Pena-Mercado, Cole Gibson, Julian Huxtable, Hayden Pomeroy, Caleb Johnson, Blake McCabe, Nathaneal Mullins, Michaela and Jessalyn Rogers and Gavin Alward of Port Angeles; and Jack Pickard from Port Townsend.
Many of the campers were able to join Heebie Jeebies thanks to scholarships, and “that is really cool,” Winslow added.
The campers are sponsored by the Jazz in the Olympics scholarship fund and by donations from local individuals and groups, according to West.
To find out about supporting the fund, phone Critchfield at 360-582-3082, and for information about the annual camp at Lake Crescent, visit www.CampHeebieJeebies.us.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
