美国国家公共电台 NPR At This Summer Camp, Horn Players Of All Ages Find Community

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

It's summer. You can pack the car, slather on some sunscreen and head to camp. And this summer, we're visiting a few of the most unusual camps around the country. There is a retreat in New Hampshire where horn players meet up to master their instruments in the mountain air. And another thing - it's not just a camp for children. Maine Public Radio's Patty Wight reports on the musicians of all ages who meet up at Kendall Betts Horn Camp.

PATTY WIGHT, BYLINE¹: If you're not a horn player, you may know this instrument as the French horn. But that's actually a misnomer². It's just the horn. Though you may not recognize it by name, you likely recognize its sound. It's helped to create some of the most epic³ classical songs and movie themes.

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WIGHT: Horns have been featured in orchestras for hundreds of years. And now, every summer, dozens of horn players go to the woods in the White Mountains to return to their instruments' primitive⁴ roots.

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Playing horns).

WIGHT: The Kendall Betts Horn Camp attracts players of all abilities, including aspiring⁵ professionals like 22-year-old Torrin Hallett of Wisconsin. When he first came four years ago, it sealed his fate.

TORRIN HALLETT: It was just incredible. I'd never before been in a place where everybody just spoke⁷ horn all the time.

BERNHARD SCULLY: Today, the hope is to do the kind of last big combination of articulation⁸. And that is the slur⁹, legato, staccato.

WIGHT: The language of the horn emanates¹⁰ from wood cabins from morning until night as teachers like Bernhard Scully, a horn professor from the University of Illinois, guide study groups divided by age and ability. He says in one week, participants absorb about a semester's worth of training. And they also find kindred spirits.

SCULLY: And it's sort of a bonding. It's sort of a family, you know for all of us. Wherever we are in the world, whatever we're doing, this is a place where we can come and convene¹¹, sit together, eat together, just commune together about all things related to the French horn, all in a positive, noncompetitive environment.

WIGHT: The bonds form quickly when one player reminds their group they're about to play a song for the last time together. They lament¹².

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WIGHT: But the camp has a lasting¹³ impact. It's propelled many of its alumni into careers. Sixteen-year-old Colin Lundy of Illinois came to camp for the first time this summer, and he now wants to go pro⁶.

COLIN LUNDY: 'Cause as a high schooler, like, it's so different. And it's kind of, like, a taste of what it's like to be in the professional music world.

WIGHT: It's a world that's not entered lightly. Instructor¹⁴ Lowell Greer is a retired¹⁵ professional soloist¹⁶. He says the horn is a difficult instrument.

LOWELL GREER: When we play concert here, we have the most sympathetic crowd in the world. They all know the difficulties. They all know the hurdles¹⁷ we have to get over. And they're cheering, each for the other.

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Playing horns).

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: That's so much fun.

WIGHT: Fun that draws many of these horn players back every summer. For NPR News, I'm Patty Wight.

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Playing horns).