TDSB's Downtown Summer Strings, 2017

This week, I went to the Toronto District School Board's Downtown Summer Strings. It is a 2 week program but I was at Leahy Music Camp last week.

I am really good at sight reading sheet music, so I was able to fit in with the group well. I missed out on the Chamber Groups though because they form in the first week.

I played viola in the 'more advanced' group.
Camp is so much fun!

This year, on Stuffed Thing Day when the Chamber Groups perform for our Stuffed toys, my stuffed thing, Ptolemy XIX, won 'Most Likely to Look Like 18 Other Stuffed Things" and it got a cup covered with pictures which looked exactly like him!

Here are a couple videos from the concert.

The 'More advanced' group played Russian Sailor's Dance  by R. Gliere arranged by E. Del Borgo.

And the "Really Big Group" played Swallowtail (traditional) arranged by Ian Guenther.

Here is a picture of me with Andres. The last time I saw him, he performed Bach's Coffee Cantata with the Rezonance Baroque Ensemble.

Ed Hayes came to see the performance. He arranges music and the Downtown Summer Strings Staff and Staff Aides performed his arrangement of Journey's Don't Stop Believing.

I found this picture from the first time I met Ed in April 2010. Back then, I only played piano and my Mom was trying to convince me to try cello. He and his wife, Marie, came to my school and did a presentation about music from around the world.

This is a picture of me with Ian Guenther and Rebecca Kurtis-Pomeroy.
Every year, they put on this amazing camp and my summer doesn't feel right without it.

Thank you so much to Ian, Rebecca, Andres, Felix, Jonathan, and Lee and all of the Staff Aides!



Here are some pictures of me with Ian from 2013 - 2017.

Links to my older Blog Posts about Downtown Summer Strings:
2015
2015 CTV News Feature

2014
2013

TDSB's Downtown Summer Strings 2015

Yesterday was the last day of the TDSB's Downtown Summer Strings camp.
We had our end of camp concert and it went really well.

We had a slide show of pictures from activities we had at the camp. I don't have any pictures from the slide show but, Mom took this picture of me with my 'Stuffed Things' from "Stuffed Thing Day".
My Charles (the red head) got "Most Terrifying Stuffed Thing".

On Stuffed Thing Day we perform in chamber groups for the Stuffed Things and some of the chamber groups are chosen to perform in the concert.


Here is a picture of me with Ian Guenther.  He is the perfect combination of being laid back AND very particular. :-)

Daniela is a violist and she helped me a lot in our sectionals.

Rebecca helps to run the camp and she is an amazing teacher.

Here is a link to my blog post about the feature of this year's camp on CTV News:
http://www.joshdlee.blogspot.ca/2015/07/tdsbs-downtown-summer-strings-on-ctv.html

And here is a link to my blog post about last year's Downtown Summer Strings camp.
http://joshdlee.blogspot.ca/2014/07/downtown-summer-strings.html