CAMMAC: The Summer Music Camp Experience

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After sustaining an injury that made it difficult to continue playing violin and viola, Guylaine Lemaire opted to continue her music career as the artistic director of Canadian Amateur Musicians/Musiciens amateurs du Canada (CAMMAC). What she found was a musical environment that fostered new passions and forged lifetime friendships like no other.

At CAMMAC, musicians sign up for a week of music-centric programming, renting rooms on campus or setting up tents to sleep on campgrounds. Campers put on a concert every morning, spend a few hours in lessons and practising individually, and finally enjoy a concert performed by the teachers in the evening.

Lemaire has performed at most of the major Canadian music festivals, including the Festival de Lanaudière, Festival international du Domaine Forget, and at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. She’s been the executive director of Canadian chamber orchestra Thirteen Strings since 2013, and is married to Julian Armour, executive director of Music and Beyond Festival.

She decided to apply for her position at CAMMAC because the camp’s mission to be a non-competitive, encouraging environment for performing and teaching, spoke to her as a parent of four boys.

“When you’re on stage in front of 2,000 people or trying to win a job in a symphony orchestra, it’s a really stressful, cut-throat business,” she says. “CAMMAC was almost the opposite of that. The people who come to CAMMAC don’t come to get rich. They come because they love music.”

The camp organizes week-long classes from spring to fall, with most of their activity in the summer. At their busiest, they have 150 campers and teachers on the premises per week. Even after eight weeks of non-stop performing, organizing, and socializing in the summer, it still shocks Lemaire to go home. “I’m not a lonely person—I have a big family—but the conversations and events at the camp are so stimulating.”

Programming is geared toward all ages, with campers as young as four years old, and as old as 100. Lemaire believes it’s important to cater to older generations—people continue to learn at any age, she says, and seniors can be very isolated.

“At CAMMAC, I once met a lady who was almost 98,” Lemaire says. “She came with four generations of her family, and she was having a few cognitive issues, but she didn’t want to just play bingo. Music is what she loves to do. She took a harpsichord class, of all things, and she made progress during the week.”

Pascale Poirier is a longtime CAMMAC camper and staff member. She says the camp is a good occasion to introduce children to different forms of music appreciation—from practising by themselves to listening to concerts and collaborating with others, and developing rhythmic sensibility through movement. The wide range of musical activities keeps her coming back to the camp year after year.

One summer, Poirier’s daughter Charlie took a Broadway class, during which she learned and performed choreographed dances to musical numbers. As a native French speaker, Charlie found it challenging but rewarding to learn the English lyrics to The Little Mermaid’s “Under the Sea.”

She also started playing ukelele and flute, two instruments she says she wouldn’t have picked up without attending the camp. She enjoyed the ukulele more than expected, and found it much more accessible than the guitar.

“We can play many different things and discover new passions,” Charlie says. “The first time I performed I was stressed, but after more concerts I got used to it.”

Lemaire says it’s common for young musicians to feel inspired to practise an instrument after learning with others. “Let’s face it, it’s not easy to practise,” she says. “Having a reason to practise—wanting to play in a particular concert, or having made friends in a group, and feeling a responsibility to know your part—that’s very stimulating.”

Guylaine Lemaire (Photo provided)

There’s also a lot of non-musical programming at the camp. CAMMAC’s traditional 2-3 p.m. naptime doubles as downtime for the adults. Campers can follow up the break in music with activities like yoga, tai chi, or Feldenkrais exercise therapy. Lemaire says this hour of silence is crucial to the camp’s success.

“We believe music is wellness, so people have to move and be comfortable in their bodies,” she says. “It’s (also) normal to want to be on the beach in the afternoon.”

Isabelle Vadeboncoeur started as a CAMMAC sports monitor in 1997. Despite having no formal musical training outside elementary and high-school singing lessons, she graduated to teaching a choral class at the camp in 2000. CAMMAC also gave her the opportunity to start an African drumming course in 2004, inspired by her recent travels to Africa.

Vadeboncoeur says learning how to create harmonies with a group and make choral arrangements of popular music triggered a new passion that changed her life.

“I did a lot of overtime,” she says. “Just ask any of the teachers from the early 2000s; it was a pleasure for me to organize extra activities, and to witness musicians have a good time. I even started a teen choir in Montreal for a few years.”

To Vadeboncoeur, there’s nothing like watching campers improve over the week, and expand their skills. With many people returning year after year, Lemaire says it’s also great to see them progress as they grow older.

“(At the start of March) we had a number of returning teenagers. Last year they were a little hesitant with their newly acquired skills; this year they made so much progress,” Lemaire says. “They really grooved. I think that’s what camps create.”