Where Trinidad and Tobago Meet Door County: Birch Creek’s Percussion Session

Photo by Tom Hodges.

“Have you ever heard the music of the steel pan? It’s something that goes right through your chest.” That’s how Kate Rericha, Director of Marketing, PR and Grants, describes the intensity of the sound coming from more than a dozen young students playing steel pan and other percussion instruments in a milking shed on a 100-year old farm outside of Egg Harbor. Hard to imagine? Only if you are not familiar with the percussion program at Birch Creek Music Performance Center, a concert venue and summer music school for students ages 12 to 19. To attend an evening concert at Birch Creek for the first time is to stumble on something almost magical. And while there are jazz, symphony and percussion sessions each summer, the percussion program may be the most unexpected in Door County, with its diverse sounds created by top instructors who have studied and played in several different countries and by talented and eager students, who bring back adoring audiences year after year.

The Birch Creek learning model is full immersion:  technique courses, master classes and rehearsals all day and concerts each night for two weeks. Students learn from professional musicians and then listen to them perform, or perform alongside them, in the same venue, the beautifully maintained original barn. The percussion program prioritizes this kind of cooperation. “We work hard to find the right music that will be challenging to the student and that also will be a hit with the audience,” says Robert Chappell, Program Director. When the students open a concert, and then the faculty plays the featured program, “everyone feels part of the Birch Creek music family.”

Instructors stress to their students that collaboration is an essential component of creating music, as it is one they rely on and grow from in their own work. In their summer performances, the faculty moves fluidly from instrument to instrument, genre to genre, continent to continent for the origin of the sounds they create. Liam Teague, Birch Creek Artist-in-Residence, grew up in Trinidad and Tobago, birthplace of the steel pan. He has cooperated on several efforts with Chappell, who has toured, studied and taught music in India, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago and Costa Rica, and the two have created completely new types of music. Al O’Connor, Steel Band Director, began to study steel band music after he heard it “in its natural habitat,” while on his honeymoon in the Caribbean. At Birch Creek, students have the opportunity to study with faculty who have learned and picked up on new techniques from the best percussionists in the world. Chappell says that in this environment “we hand down what we have learned to the students and they, in the future, will hand this learning down to another generation.” This opportunity to work with such innovative professionals is not lost on the students.

After students have spent all day working with one another, practicing, performing, and getting a taste of what a life dedicated to music would be like, their lives can change. Every year, parents and students remind the staff of how large an impact the two short weeks have on students. In the Birch Creek admissions information, several students share their experiences:  how they learn as much in those two weeks as in all their previous percussion training, how they hate to leave at the end of the camp, and how they cannot believe they have the opportunity to perform almost every night with their instructors. Many of these students go on to pursue music in college and professionally.

Birch Creek sparks inspiration in its students at the same time it introduces its Door County audience to high-quality music. This was the original goal of the founders, James and Frances Dutton, who guided Birch Creek, and their dream of a music school in Door County, to what it is today. From 1945 to 1985, Jim Dutton was the head of the Percussion Department at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, and he and his wife Fran had a summer home in Door County. In 1976, they invited musicians from Chicago to perform for an audience in Egg Harbor after a week of instruction for 12 students, and that began the first Birch Creek session. The first session included percussion and guitar. Since 1976, the school has gained recognition, audiences, and a larger student and faculty base, supporting not just percussion and steel pan but also jazz and symphony.

While audiences love all the varied kinds of music performed at Birch Creek, “some are instantly popular, like steel band music and Afro-Cuban music because they are tied into popular dances and rhythms that anyone can relate to,” says Chappell. This accessibility to the public was the motivation behind starting a steel band program at Birch Creek. Al O’Connor, who was Head of Percussion Studies at Northern Illinois University until he retired, founded the steel band program. O’Connor was roped into the Birch Creek community when Jim Dutton wanted to expand the percussion program and called upon this percussion faculty member at another Illinois college. Now O’Connor is in his 25th year as Steel Band Director at Birch Creek, a testament to the crowd-pleasing nature of the music he directs.

Rericha cites percussion’s role in the history of music all over the world as to why it has such appeal. “The roots of music are in the drum,” she says. Steel pan originates in Trinidad and Tobago, where the instruments were made by hammering out dents in empty oil drums. There, steel pan playing is ubiquitous, and many musicians never learn to read music but instead master the instrument from studying those around them. Liam Teague learned steel pan in Trinidad when he was 12 years old. He also was classically trained in violin, and now he uses his informal training and his classical background to help his students and audiences at Birch Creek understand the complexity of the steel pan sound.

Although the Birch Creek percussion session began as a classical marimba camp, Al O’Connor knew that the musicians could expand the repertoire. That’s when Robert Chappell, professor of music at Northern Illinois University and world-touring percussionist, began his first of 19 years at Birch Creek. Chappell says that O’Connor was convinced “that the audience could be expanded with more popular and world music and, long story short, I’ve been at Birch Creek ever since.” Chappell works to incorporate sounds and instruments from his travels all over the world into the performances and instruction.

Percussion sounds and instruments from different continents, a chance to play with teens and professionals, and brand new music:  all of it is happening in a small summer music academy in Door County. What does a Birch Creek percussion concert look like? Sound like? Find out for yourself this summer between July 7th and 19th. The steel band has moved out of the milking shed, and you will be able to appreciate the fullness of the sound and, just as importantly, the richness of the show. As Chappell says of attending a Birch Creek concert:  “Percussion is the most visual of instruments. As we dance around to strike everything rhythm is imbued in everything we do, and watching the young students grow with every performance is truly inspiring.”

Perfect Pitch

On opening night of the summer 2007 concert series, Birch Creek launched its Perfect Pitch Capital Campaign. The goal of the campaign has been to raise funds to address the current needs of the music education and performance center. For years, Birch Creek students and faculty have been staying through the summer sessions in cramped quarters, practicing in rehearsal spaces that are too small (some students practice in tents!) and running out of places to safely store expensive and large instruments. With about 200 students enrolling each summer to be taught by 100 faculty members, the program has outgrown the original buildings of the farm on which the music school began and the buildings added over the years.

The Perfect Pitch  Campaign has constructed three new buildings on the historic Birch Creek campus. Even with the additions, enrollment will remain at approximately the current capacity to ensure the intensive, quality teaching and low faculty-to-student ratio that make Birch Creek unique. The new buildings address the summer rehearsal and living demands and, additionally, provide more winterized space for four-season programming and community use.

As of this summer, the campaign has raised $2.4 million of its $3 million goal. To learn more about Perfect Pitch, please visit the Birch Creek website at www.birchcreek.org.