Emerald Summer

String quartet and field recordings

14 minutes

2024

Electroacoustic

About Emerald Summer

Growing up, I spent my summers working at Camp Emerald Bay on Catalina Island. It was probably the most formative part of my adolescence and early adulthood, and I cannot say enough about what it did for my sense of self and character. When I was in music school I decided that I wanted to write a piece about about camp and the island, using the music from those summers as material—the Emerald Bay Hymn or otherwise.

I’ve started this piece many times since then, but the pressure to write something that properly captures a place so foundational to my life always stopped me before long. I didn’t think I was a good enough composer to pull it off yet. 2025 is the 100th anniversary of the camp’s founding, and it wasn’t until that was in sight that I got up the nerve to force myself to do it and asked Lee Harrison, who had first hired me as a counselor-in-training in 2000, if he’d like a piece to commemorate the milestone. Not only did he say yes, but he hired the musicians to play it at the anniversary gala. Whoa!

I will not lie: I was pretty intimidated by this one, because camp is so personal to me and to so many of the people who have worked, camped, or lived there. But during the first recording trip I asked on social media what sounds people remembered, and shared some photos from the island, and folks were so interested and excited that it gave me a great feeling of confidence.

I took two trips to Catalina to collect sounds for to make a bed of natural accompaniment for the string parts I was writing. I recorded a lot of material. Everyone had sounds that they hoped I’d capture. It struck me that when I asked what people wanted to hear, the first answer was invariably “the docks at night.”

The more sounds I put together, though, the more I realized that not much was needed. Instead of the parade different camp areas that I’d envisioned, simply playing the waves on Sandy’s and letting the listener inhabit the space for a while felt more affecting. We all have our own memories of camp, and I want Emerald Summer to be a space for everyone to enjoy their own.