Lakes Area Music Festival Brings Children’s Music Camp to Baxter

On Monday at Forestview Middle School in Baxter, the Lakes Area Music Festival welcomed 30 kids to explore its Explore Music! camp to introduce them to the world of classical music and opera.

“We’ve been doing Explore Music! for several years now. It’s a program that’s geared towards kindergartners to fifth graders that accompanies our festival here,” explained teaching artist Jeff Andrews. “And the students learn a little bit about the classical repertoire that they’re going to be hearing at some of the concerts while also learning about the instruments that they’re hearing.”

While kids are at the camp, they won’t just be sitting and learning to read music. The camp teaches music by getting everyone’s entire bodies moving.

“There’s a lot of work at lower school [grades] with music about having your whole body feel it,” continued Andrews. “Particularly with rhythm, making sure that they can feel it in their body before they ever try to go to an instrument. We like to dabble in everything to get them moving and interacting with music full-body.”

The camp reinforces topics through concerts and events at the Lakes Area Music Festival, which is being held this year through August 17th. This year, children are learning about opera ahead of a performance of Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel” on August 9th.

“What’s really amazing about using opera this year, as opposed to previous years where we’ve done classical music, is the storytelling element as well as being able to be characters themselves and be larger than life,” said camp director Lindsay Rabe. “It’s really exciting to see how they’re going to grab on to opera. Opera is also an amazingly accessible art form because of the fact that it incorporates so many things with visual art, with music, with costumes and dance.”

Camp staff only want one thing for the children: to instill a love of music and the arts within them.

“[We want to] give them that impetus or the excitement and just the thrill of what music and arts can bring, so that they continue it and we continue to breed young artists and musicians,” Rabe added.

The Lakes Area Music Festival is continuing its events this week with a block party at Brainerd’s Mississippi Landing Amphitheater on Wednesday at 6 p.m. A schedule of events can be found on the festival’s website.