On a drizzly afternoon in the Shelter Rock Jewish Center’s nursery school building last Thursday, music instructor Andrew Parsegian stood at a microphone with a guitar in hand and a flock of students around him so young, their instruments, huge in their tiny hands, were nearly too heavy to hold while standing.
Though the Beyond Rock summer camp where he teaches doesn’t start until July, Parsegian told each of the students to join him in playing Sublime’s “What I Got” for an audience of parents and students interested in signing up for the program, silencing a groaning young minstrel by assuring the group the song only involves two chords he’s already taught them.
Each student began to strum, and after a few runs through the chord progression each was is in sync. A drummer took his position behind a kit and joined in, a bassist followed suit moments later, and the group rumbled through the song, which ended with a thunderous round of applause and grins of accomplishment on each of the students’ faces.
“The main goal of the camp is not even about music,” said the camp’s founder, Maria Sarro. “Anything in life that’s challenging will bring you up against where you think you are stopped, so for us it’s about forming a supportive and encouraging community which helps them step out of their comfort zone and get the success and confidence that comes with it.”
Sarro, who previously worked in information technology and also founded a charter elementary school in the south Bronx, founded Beyond Rock a decade ago with friend and Garden City Middle School music teacher Mike Russo and will introduce the program to Roslyn this summer for one week-long session and one two-week session this July at Shelter Rock Jewish Center at 272 Shelter Rock Road in Roslyn.
Students at the camp range from age 7-17 and learn many of the different roles one can have within the music industry, from playing multiple instruments and using recording equipment to designing choreography and dressing a stage for live performances, all in an effort to build confidence and overcome social anxiety and shyness, which Sarro said she’s struggled with at times herself.
“Maria was really shy for a long time,” said Russo, whose father George was a special education teacher and administrator in the Mineola School District for 30 years. “She tried a lot of different things to help her through it.”
Sarro participated in various workshops and self-help programs to help her “step out of [her] comfort zone,” she said, but it wasn’t until she visited Russo’s music class, which involved young students playing rock and roll instruments, that the idea for the camp formed.
“It’s talked about as being a family, as the one place on earth where you can be yourself, and there’s not many places like that in general,” Sarro said. “I think for kids, to have that kind of space where you can feel the love when you walk in, it doesn’t happen by accident. We generate that and we have conversations that help create that kind of space, where they do support each other. There’s a lot of structure, but there’s a lot of freedom within the structure that allows students to get what they want out of the program, too.”
Students also learn song-writing techniques and musical theory in smaller, more intimate workshop sessions with camp staff, which in the past has included Bryce Larsen, a former American Idol semi-finalist; Kristin Hoffman, who has toured with the Wallflowers; and Scott Harris, a professional songwriter who recently sold material to Kelly Clarkson.
“The experiences of Beyond Rock is to do something that can be very vulnerable and scary, which is putting yourself out there,” Sarro said. “I have very specific conversations with the kids, even starting on day one. Why would you want to step out of your comfort zone, and what do you need from each other to do some of the risks you need to take to be successful and be a musician? It creates that container within which magic can happen.”
On the first day of camp, students form bands based on their age, musical proficiency and favorite genres, Sarro said, and work on three songs over the course of the session they’ll play at week’s end for friends and family at Mulcahy’s Pub and Concert Hall in Wantagh.
“We get all kinds of students,” Sarro said. “There are kids who have never picked up an instrument and they just like music or try to sing along with the radio, and then we have other kids who are [so talented], like, can I be you? You’re kind of, like, my hero. ”
Perhaps the most significant period during the session, Sarro said, is a block of time devoted to students doing whatever they choose, to practicing an instrument to putting the guitar down entirely and running around outside.
“The thing for me is to help these kids find out about themselves in a way they didn’t already know,” said Russo, who’s father George was a special education teacher and administrator in the Mineola School District for 30 years. “That’s what the camp does on a major level.”
Kim Foxen, a junior voice major at the Manhattan School of Music, said she registered for Beyond Rock at Russo’s suggestion while taking his electronic music class at Garden City Middle School.
Influenced mostly by jazz and classical artists, Foxen said she was apprehensive about singing rock songs, particularly by herself and without the aid of her church choir, which had served as her only singing experience up to that point in her life.
“I thought it was the scariest thing to do, getting up and fronting a band,” Foxen said. “But I’ve really grown to love it, and it’s opened my up to music I hadn’t ever really listened to before.”
Foxen attended Beyond Rock for five years, and said the camp exposed her to a world of music she may not have experienced otherwise, citing bands she studied at the camp, like the Eagles, the Beatles and Lynyrd Skynyrd, among her favorite rock artists today.
“This place was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Foxen said. “I had so many musical firsts, like my first guitar and my first guitar chord and my first concert, because of this place.”
This year, Foxen will return as a counselor to teach an opera singing workshop, passing along the music and experiences she had as a camper to help a new generation of budding rockers step out of their comfort zones, even if doing so makes them sound more like Susan Boyle than Mick Jagger.
“If the kids never pick up a guitar again, but have the experience from the camp, it translates into other experiences in life, which teaches a bigger message that you could feel afraid and feel stopped, but it doesn’t mean you can’t move past that,” Sarro said.
