BUTLER TWP. — Beneath the band shell at Ferrwood Music Camp, a quartet starts playing a ballad.
"It's slow, like this," says Chas Rosler, snapping fingers on one hand, holding a trombone in the other.
Mackenzie Rhone follows the beat, tapping fingernails on the head of the snare in her drum kit.
Then Rosler and Jayden Forte, on saxophone, start playing in unison.
Arthur Grimsley bides his time at the keyboard.
When the song ends, Rosler has a red ring around his lips from the trombone mouthpiece.
It's just after lunch when students at Ferrwood Music Camp have free time to play games, make art or cool off in the dunk tank, but Rosler and his combo went back to the songbook even after practicing music for 150 minutes in the morning.
Are your lips sore?
"A little bit," Rosler says.
Ferrwood opens annually for two weeks for students in grades five to 12 who play instruments or sing.
Students who want to attend the final week can learn about registration at www.ferrwood.org.
Each week, there's a carnival one evening, a talent show another and a concert on the last night, Friday at 6:30 for parents and the public who gather on the lawn in front of the band shell.
During free time each afternoon, campers can play sports or indoor games like foosball and ping-pong, work on art projects and hike around the grounds.
Many use free time to learn a new instrument.
Grimsley, who attends 9th grade at Bloomsburg Area School District with Rosler, says he is a trombonist, too, but tried some keyboard parts this week.
Rhone, the drummer, also plays French horn at Central Columbia, where she is in ninth grade.
"I've really grown to love it," she said, adding she would like to make music a career.
Forte put down his saxophone when the combo quit rehearsing to play Gaga ball, a game like dodge ball inside a small arena. Players are out if the ball hits them below the knees or if they slap the ball over the wall.
A 10th grader at Hazleton Area Academy of Sciences who plays piano as well as saxophone, Forte has attended Ferrwood for two years.
"The environment is always music," Forte says while waiting for the next Gaga ball game to start. He has been learning things that he wasn't taught at school during four hours of lessons a day at camp.
"Lessons are a half-day, but it doesn't feel like it. I'm having fun at this," he says.
Two of the instructors, Caleb Bohanan and Alex Mann, are playing cards beneath a picnic table during their afternoon break.
Bohanan teaches low brass instruments and comes from Pittsburgh, while Mann, from near Washington, D.C., teaches saxophone.
Inside the dining hall, Destiny Rodriguez is adding shadow to an anime drawing that she did in watercolor and colored pencil as Samantha Adorno offers advice and Samantha Adorno works on her own drawing.
All three attend Hazleton Area Arts and Humanities Academy and participate in the art program that Ferrwood began last year.
Rodriguez decided to try the art program, even though she also plays clarinet and trumpet.
Soriano does an cartoonish impression of campers snoring that is almost musical.
Adorno is finishing an homage to a comic legend.
"I just started liking Stan Lee so I started drawing him," said Adorno, who also does tattoos.
Her portrait of Lee, in black and white, faces Spiderman, in his blue and red suit, crouched along a vertical wall with skyscrapers in the background.
Judy Kranyak and Lindsay Walsh are cleaning up after serving lunch.
Both have children at Ferrwood and volunteer in the kitchen, which serves up Italian, Polish, Latin dinners and holds pizza night before the family concerts.
Kranyak has helped at camp for 13 or 14 years.
"I like it in the kitchen, but there's music playing somewhere all day," she said.
Her son, Luke, now playing with the Blue Band at Penn State University, attended Ferrwood through high school and came back to visit the day before.
As Kranyak talks, her daughter, Anya, returns with from a hike with about half the campers, who were gone 90 minutes, including a stop for pizza and ice cream at Vesuvio's Pizzeria.
Walsh said Ferrwood gives her the same vibe as the Catholic high school that she attended in Hazleton.
"Something about walking in felt very much like Bishop Hafey, like people care about you," Walsh said.
The Rev. Joseph Ferrara, who directed music at Catholic schools in Hazleton, started Ferrwood Music Camp in the 1960s, although the buildings date to 1927 when children with tuberculosis attended a fresh air camp.
After Ferrara died, one of his students, Phil Latella, took over as a director. Like many instructors and cafeteria workers, Latella takes no salary at the camp, which operates under stewardship of CAN DO Community Foundation.
Marissa Clatch, a Ferrwood alumnus, returned to help cook supper.
"It's important to give back because Ferrwood is really important to me. It fostered a love of music," says Clatch, who was hired recently to teach music in Hazleton Area School District.
Thinking of former campers, she says: "So many of us have gone into music."
Meanwhile, long-time camper Brayden Dudinyak, who just graduated from Hazleton Area High School and will study music this fall at Messiah University, is working as a junior counselor.
During the afternoon, Dudinyak runs the snack bar, taking money from campers who stop in to buy drinks or snacks. He shows one young girl how to enter a fun pass that she earned into a drawing for a prize.
"Every day, I like working these couple hours," he said.
The snack bar isn't very busy, so between customers Dudinyak plays a melodica, a keyboard attached to an air tube.
Dudinyak hears the music through ear buds, but the notes appear on a computer screen, showing a score he has been composing for a year and hopes an orchestra will perform someday.
Source: Ken Jackson / Staff Writer
Photo Credit: John Haeger / Staff Photographer
Standard-Speaker Newspaper, Hazleton PA