Piano Camps for Adults and Children:
A Grand and Upright Experience!
These programs are designed for a well rounded experience that includes a series of private lessons with highly qualified piano teachers, extensive daily practice time, classes in music theory, history and sight reading, master classes and performances, and the opportunity to perform in a concert/recital.
Participants in The Sonatas, The Sonata Intermezzo, and Summer Sonatina enjoy strong musical programs presented in a noncompetitive and supportive environment. The friendly, family-style lessons are housed in a charming historic mansion in Old Bennington, Vermont, chock full of pianos waiting to be played. Participants and students come from more than 40 states, Canada and other countries around the world to play piano, to learn music, to have fun and to make a connection with other like-minded music-loving individuals. Many return year after year to reconnect with the keyboard and rekindle friendships. 
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NEW!
Dates for 2010 are available and posted! Enrollment is ongoing.
SONATINA 40TH CELEBRATION!
40 years! 4000 pianists! 40,000 fingers! Sonatina in Old Bennington Vermont, an international piano camp for children and adults of all levels of piano ability, will be celebrating its 40th year on Saturday, July 4th with a public concert. This is not your typical concert. There will be 42 young pianists, between the ages of 7 and 16, performing the Pachelbel Canon in a round on 31 different pianos that are placed in various unusual locations in the Sonatina camp house. The program will also include solo and duet piano performances by Sonatina faculty members, playing Chopin, Barber, Dvorak, Olson and other works.
20 years ago, students who were then enrolled in the camp performed the Pachelbel Canon and have never forgotten the experience. Rosamond van der Linde, the camp's founder, created this idea and will be in attendance for the reenactment. Van der Linde, an avid punster, began the program by shooting off a cannon and from the loud downbeat, the students started playing.
Current camp director and owner, Polly van der Linde and her husband, Dale Cobb, purchased the house and business from her mother in 1998, keeping the spirit of this special portion of piano heaven by hiring faculty who continue to support an extended family atmosphere of pianists gathering together to carry on the musical tradition of the van der Linde family.
Film director, Joel Gardner, of Camp Gardner Films, will be on hand to capture more footage for a full-feature documentary film that is being done on the camps, the house, the faculty and staff, and the large number of pianos tucked into every nook and cranny at Sonatina. Camp Gardner Films was recently awarded a Billy Rose Foundation Grant to document the piano stories that many have experienced while in attendance at camp.
The magic of the Sonatina programs has spread worldwide, with piano participants coming from as far as Japan and New Zealand. Sonatina alumni hold reunions or visit with each other throughout the country to renew friendships and support each other's musical progress long after they've come to camp.
Noah Adams, a host on National Public Radio, attended the Autumn Sonata 1994 and his experience is featured in an entire chapter of his book entitled "Piano Lessons: Music, Love and True Adventures."
Sonatina has also appeared in the New York Times in a travel destination article written by Katie Hafner, on CNN's NewsNight with Aaron Brown by producer Beth Nissen, Seventeen, Vermont Life and Yankee magazines as well as Vermont Educational Television's "Crossroads."
In addition, student concerts are held every Thursday, from July 2-23 at 6:00pm at the Bennington Center for the Arts. These concerts are free.Tickets to the 7:00pm July 4th concert are $10 at the door or $5 in advance. Park behind the Monument Elementary School and proceed to the back yard of Sonatina. Call 802-442-9197 or visit our website at www.sonatina.com for more information and reservations.
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