PACO Camp
Toby Wong - November 2021
My fingers flew up the fingerboard into precise positions ingrained into my muscle memory from playing so much in the past week, while my right hand moved the bow rhythmically up and down the strings both freely and delicately at the same time.
I really enjoy playing the violin. Violin allows you to fully control the sound that comes out of your instrument, from vibrato, to volume, to overall tone of the sound using your bow and fingers. Because of covid, my old orchestra started doing Zoom rehearsals and they were really boring, which is why I decided to audition for another orchestra, called PACO, which stands for Palo Alto Chamber Orchestra. I actually had already auditioned twice the previous years, but I didn't get in. I decided to try again just because I didn't enjoy my current orchestra because it was online. So, I was really happy when I got an acceptance email on May 17th. I was in the car coming home from school and my mom said, “Toby, I have good news for you,” and then showed me the email. I was thrilled. One of the parts of being in PACO would be the yearly one-week sleepaway camp. I was really nervous because I didn’t know what to expect. What if it was just playing violin for a week straight? Would I make friends? Would the food be good? I didn't know anybody at PACO.
A couple of weeks later, I received an email with info about the camp. It also had a long piece for me to practice to prepare for the camp. I wasn't practicing violin very much, so I procrastinated practicing that piece until a week before. One week before camp, I started looking at some of the music and realized there were some really hard parts, so I was practicing an hour or two every day until the camp.
When I arrived at camp, I stood there awkwardly holding my violin, a duffel bag, a pillow, and a sleeping bag. All the other kids looked a lot older than me with their instruments, and they were all talking to each other. I didn’t really know where to go, who to talk to, or where to put my stuff. I saw people lining up so I joined the line. At the front of the line there was a lady and she explained to me my coaches, and which cabin I would be.
“You’re in Payton’s group, and you’ll be in Miller 1,” she explained. “over there. Put your stuff away and lunch is at twelve thirty in the dining hall, behind me.” She pointed towards a dirt path some other campers were walking up and down. I followed the path and our cabin where everyone else had already put their stuff down.
I came back down to the dining hall. As I went forward in line, I noticed every table had a group of campers that looked like they were close. I didn’t know where to sit because I didn’t know anyone.
I found another guy who looked lost and asked “Hey, is this your first year?”
“Yeah,” he said timidly. We Introduced, then we found a table of guys a couple of years older.
“Hey we’re new, can we sit here?” I asked really awkwardly, Joseph and I sat
with them. But even though I was glad I had someone to sit with, I didn't really feel like I belonged. I later learned that they were seniors, and Joseph was friendly, but really quiet. After lunch, the schedule on the dining hall door said we had half an hour of free time. I naturally went to the ping pong table since I enjoy playing, but also because I didn’t have friends to do anything else with. There were 3 girls and 4 guys. All of them seemed older than me and they seemed to already be close friends. We casually introduced and got names while playing ping pong, and everyone was friendly and very energetic. Then it was time for our first chamber group rehearsal. A chamber group is a small group of musicians, usually playing classical music. A chamber group has at least two musicians but usually has three to five. Mine was a quartet of four violinists.
The paper on the dining hall door said my chamber group met at “cary lodge”, I asked someone where that was. When I got there, there were two other boys who looked about my age, they were both violinists. We introduced ourselves while waiting for Payton, who was assigned as our chamber group coach. This just means he guides us, helping us stay together and telling us stuff like “Toby, you should come out louder at this part you have the melody there.” He was super friendly and had us start by just playing through the piece. The full run through of the piece took about 20 minutes. The session was 90 minutes, so for the rest of the time we started going into depth, paying attention to details like tone and volume, as well as playing more in sync, with queues. The session was very productive but long. The rest of the day flew by; we had dinner and I had friends to sit with, then went to sleep. I was really tired so I fell asleep in about 5 minutes.
The next few days were very similar. I would wake up around 6:30, maybe go on a run, then have breakfast with my friends. Then we would have our morning rehearsal which was 90 minutes, then lunch. We would do something fun like go on a hike or to the beach, then have an afternoon rehearsal that was 90 minutes to 2 hours. After that we would have dinner, then a full orchestra “freight reading,” which is where the whole camp gathers and we play random fun pieces, like Pirates of The Caribbean, classical music, or even “Toxic” by Britney Spears. Before going to bed, my friends and I would either wind down on our phones, checking the messages we missed throughout the day, play cards or a board game, or maybe just fool around.
On the last night, instead of freight reading, we had performances. All the campers played in their chamber groups, and it was amazing to listen to all these talented musicians playing together after a long but fun week of practice. We all performed, watched people perform, and since we were in different chamber groups, we helped each other record our performances. While the chamber group that was performing before us got on the little stage, we left with our instruments and tuned them, warming up and encouraging each other. They finished, and we walked onto stage, right in front of me my friend Sarah was recording for me. We looked at each other, and started playing. My hands were sweating, making it hard for me to shift properly. But, listening to the violins around me kept me in place and we played well. I went through my solo well, then the piece ended. It felt so short, when in reality it was 16 minutes.
The camp ended with an all-nighter, which is one of my favorite memories. Obviously we had barely slept all week, so with the energy we got from eating a bunch of candy and other sugar, like eating hot chocolate powder straight--I mean, What? I would never do that-- mixing fruit punch and ice cream, we chased each other around until we were tired. We played murder board games until my friend got mad and started chasing people around again. We danced club penguin on the stage where we performed our chamber pieces, and we sang popular songs. Since everyone was really good with music, my friends Kashi and Nadia played along with the chords on the piano.
Around 4 in the morning I was playing ping pong with my friend Sebastian while the others were in the hall, since there was wifi. I turned and saw a little raccoon popping its head out from under the wooden deck. When it noticed I saw it, it went back under but we quickly ran to where it was, and I saw 3 pairs of glowing eyes looking back at me. Later we saw raccoons everywhere, in the trees or running around. We hadn’t noticed them since, for all the previous nights, nobody was out this late. At the end of the exhausting day and all-nighter, we added each other on Discord.
Our parents came to pick us up after lunch, but before leaving, we performed our freight reading pieces for them, half awake. I went home and immediately went to sleep. By the end of PACO Camp, I had probably played 50 hours in total. My fingers hurt a ton from pressing against the violin strings, but now I had calluses so I could practice longer, I had made new friends, and now I could appreciate chamber music a lot more.
