Music School with a Star Wars/Jedi Master twist.

This camp is all about music and space.  The cosmos has inspired a ton of great music.  Historically, music has also been understood to be a reflection of cosmic order, and vice versa.  Group activities and projects (drumming, singing, chanting, concentration and music theory exercises and games) focus on space-themed music and films.  Along the way, we'll cover same basic lessons about the universe, our solar system, planets, moons, stars, comets, gravity and more.  And for kicks, we'll do some goofy things like using pool noodles for light sabers.  

Musical source selections will range from famous orchestral film scores by Williams and others to their inspiration in Gustav Holst's The Planets and tone poems like Also spruce Zarathustra by Richard Strauss.  We'll tie in other famous tv and film scores, including Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Interstellar, and scenes like the playful tone pattern dialogue from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  Popular and rock music with literal or metaphorical references to the cosmos, outer space or space travel will also be incorporated, including Bowie's Space Oddity, the jazz standard Fly Me to the Moon, and more modern works by Ligeti (Atmospheres), John Coltrane (Mars), and Miles Davis.      

Private lessons on the instrumet of choice included.

Students divided by age and skill level.  Beginners and more experienced students welcome.

All things piano. Classical, jazz, pop, rock, blues, the piano has occupied a central role in many styles of music since its invention by Bartolomeo Cristofori in Italy around the year 1700. It’s also been a focal point of musical education for American children since the mid 1800s.

CMC Atlanta Piano Camp provides beginners and more experienced players alike the opportunity to develop both playing skills and musical understanding and awareness. Through a mix of private lessons and group activities (singing, drumming, arts and crafts, theory games and projects), students will learn good technique, build their knowledge of the fundamentals of music, and tackle a couple of age and skill appropriate compositions. Piano Camp also includes introduction of historical repertoire (from virtuosic to famous pieces, like Fur Elise, that most piano students learn along the way), lessons in how the piano works, projects that introduce important composers for the instrument (from Muzio Clementi to Mozart, Chopin, to Thelonious Monk and Elton John), and live performances by CMC Atlanta Artist Resident Teachers.

For beginners, we gear the curriculum to laying a firm foundation to support playing and continued study after camp. For more experienced players, we introduce new solo and collaborative pieces, more advanced concepts, and teach improvisation, a skill overlooked in many piano studios. When it comes to improvisation, even experienced students mostly start from scratch when they come to our camp, and most students enjoy having this world of artistic expression opened for them in an encouraging setting. 

Students divided by age and skill level. Beginners and more experienced students welcome.