Registration is now open for summer music camps at UT Tyler for high school student musicians in percussion, brass and jazz. Kyle Gullings, director of the School of Performing Arts, explains what students can expect and how to get involved in these fun learning opportunities.
Mike Landess: For UT Tyler Radio, I’m Mike Landess. Whether your young musician is into percussion or brass or jazz, UT Tyler has a camp for that, and it’s this summer. UT Tyler Radio is a sponsor. Joining us is UT Tyler music professor, Dr. Kyle Gullings. Welcome.
Kyle Gullings: Hi. Thanks, Mike.
Mike Landess: Good to have you here. Again, this is going to be a busy June for the UT Tyler School of Performing Arts. Let’s start with details on the Percussion Camp. This is the first year for that.
Kyle Gullings: Yes, absolutely. It’s the very first time that we’re offering that camp, and we’re excited to be welcoming students on our campus for that purpose.
Mike Landess: Now it starts on the 19th (of June) and goes through the 23rd. Tell us about what all’s going to be available to these interested young musicians as they come in.
Kyle Gullings: Yes, absolutely. That camp is open to high school students grades nine through 12, and it’s a fantastic opportunity for some young percussionists to build on their musical skills they’ve developed. They’re gonna be working on fundamentals sessions, attend master classes, take part in percussion ensemble experiences and drum line.
Mike Landess: So, for something like this now, they don’t bring instruments with them. Those instruments are here, right?
Kyle Gullings: For the percussionists? Yes, that’s true. Yeah.
Mike Landess: Because you can’t move all that stuff around.
Kyle Gullings: They tend not to bring their own instruments very often. Yeah.
Mike Landess: Now Dr. Tyree Hastings is the Percussion Camp director. Has he talked about how many students he’s expecting?
Kyle Gullings: It’s often hard to tell in the very first year, so we’ll just have to see about the numbers on that one. But we’re hoping that we’ll get somewhere upwards of a dozen, we hope, as a good starting point. And we’ll just grow from there.
Mike Landess: Our local high schools have got some great drum lines.
Kyle Gullings: Absolutely. It’s fun to watch those kids just go after it. I hope to see some of them at our events this year.
Mike Landess: So, the second annual Brass Camp runs from June 19 to 23 as well, and the camp director is Dr. Jeremy McBain. This is going to be the second year for this camp.
Kyle Gullings: It is, yeah. And they’re gonna be both happening at the same time in the same building, so it’ll be an interesting juggling of schedules. We’ll have percussionists running into trumpet players and vice versa but in a good way. We’re excited about that. This is their second year, so they’re gonna look to grow and build on the success they had last year. There, those brass students are gonna come and work to improve the fundamentals of their sound on their instruments, work on their technique performance abilities, and be inspired and directed by the fabulous UT Tyler Brass faculty that we have here.
Mike Landess: They, also as I understand now, they will bring their own instruments.
Kyle Gullings: They will, yeah, in that particular case, because it’s so specialized.
Mike Landess: Elmer Churampi is a native of Peru, started playing trumpet at 4 years old. He’s been performing with the Boston Pops, The Boston Symphony, The Chicago Symphony, and he is a special guest for this event.
Kyle Gullings: Yes, absolutely. He’s a really high-level guest artist whom they’re bringing in for a feature concert on Wednesday of that week. So that’s gonna be a real treat for the people attending that Brass Camp. People should come out and see that. Elmer also plays right now with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. So we’re happy to have him make the trip over on that Wednesday, and we’re excited to hear him play.
Mike Landess: Do the campers get a chance to interact with him at some point in time? I mean, I think having the chance to sit down with a guy who’s so successful and started so young…
Kyle Gullings: Yeah. More than just interact and talk, but actually doing a master class, so be able to play in front of him and have him give some feedback to them in real time about how they can improve their playing, which is one of the real benefits of attending a camp like this.
Mike Landess: This is the second year for the camp. How did last year’s Brass Camp go?
Kyle Gullings: It went fantastic by all accounts. We were really happy to get that launched and off the ground, and we’re just really looking forward to building on the success of last year.
Mike Landess: Now, these two events are taking place on (June) the 19th, brass and percussion, and they run through the 23rd. Is there gonna be any kind of a special performance at the end of all of this?
Kyle Gullings: Yes. For both camps. So the Brass Camp has three different public performances attached to it. The first one I already mentioned is that guest faculty artist, Elmer, who’s coming on Wednesday the 21st at 7 p.m. in our Braithwaite Recital Hall. The next day, that Thursday the 22nd, will be a Brass Camp Faculty Concert where they’ll be performing some music. The faculty will play at 7 p.m. on Thursday the 22nd, and then it’ll all culminate in the students–what they’ve been working on for the past week. They’ll be presenting their Student Camper Concert at 4 p.m., all in the recital hall. The percussion camp that’s happening at the same time, we’ll just have that one student camp or concert that’s gonna happen on the other side of our building in our band hall. Also on Friday the 23rd at 5 p.m.
Mike Landess: Oh, that sounds like an awful lot of fun. Now, the students who are coming to this particular event, if a student is coming from, let’s say, out of town, let’s say they’re coming from Dallas or they’re coming from Houston, are there any accommodations for them? How do you go about accommodating them?
Kyle Gullings: So there’s both options. Students can attend as a “residential camper” or a “commuter camper” for any of the camps that we’re offering in music. If they’re coming from a long ways away or just want to get that on-campus, local experience, a preview of college you might say, they can come stay for the week, and there’s a differential tuition. They’ll pay a little bit more to stay in the dorms and get fed here. Or if they’re local or want to manage their own lodging and things, they can do that as a commuter for a slightly lower price.
Mike Landess: Is there an age range on this? Is there like a minimum age for them, too?
Kyle Gullings: The three camps are all a little bit different, but the two we’re talking about now, the brass and percussion ones are aimed at high school students really, who have some experience on their instruments and who are eager to get started in that high school age environment.
Mike Landess: They’re not raw beginners. They are people who have had some experience.
Kyle Gullings: Yeah, absolutely.
Mike Landess: All right. Let’s talk about Jazz Camp. This year’s guest artist for Jazz Camp is Spanish pianist, Sergio Pamies. He appears on a number of jazz albums as a sideman, has three albums of his own. As a pianist yourself, I know you can appreciate his talent.
Kyle Gullings: I don’t call myself a pianist, but I play piano in the music theory classroom to demonstrate ideas. But I’m always in awe some of the amazing things, not only that pianists in general can do, but especially jazz pianists. This is gonna be the sixth year of us running this Jazz Camp. It was really what got our department started on the summer camp train. And we’re really excited about it. It grew from a pretty modest beginning to now, a really active, and really well-known-in-the-region camp. Dr. Sarah Roberts has done a great job of growing that. And so we’re really excited to see what year 6 brings for her and her guest artist and for all the campers who sign up.
Mike Landess: Now, tell us what kind of cost is involved in these camps, and are there any discounts for early registration?
Kyle Gullings: Sure. So the best place to look for the specific cost would be up on the website, and prospective students can find that by going to uttyler.edu/camps, scroll down and find our three music camps.
Mike Landess: Just because they’re all slightly different from each other, right?
Kyle Gullings: But it’s true that there’s a different tuition if you’re gonna be residential versus commuting. And it’s also really important to get this out: there’s an early bird registration that will knock $50 off of your camper registration if you can register by Monday, May 15. That’s coming up real soon. To have you all stepping up as a sponsor of all three of these camps, it helps make it possible for these students to come.
Mike Landess: It’s our pleasure and our privilege. Our guest has been Dr. Kyle Gullings, professor of music for UT Tyler’s School of Performing Arts. For information about UT Tyler’s Percussion, Brass or Jazz Camps, you’ll find the link on our website, KVUT.org. There you’ll also find this interview to hear again or to share. I’m Mike Landess for UT Tyler Radio.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)
