For more than 60 years blind campers have made music at Enchanted Hills, from Rose Resnick’s expressive piano playing in the 1950s to synthesizers and digital recordings last summer. Now the LightHouse has partnered with the world’s leading company providing accessible music to bring a new summertime music academy to the redwoods.

Dancing Dots and its founder Bill McCann have developed software and procedures which allow blind musicians to read and emboss Braille and large-print music, to independently record performances and to achieve higher levels of critical listening. McCann has pioneered this specialized music academy in Canada and the U.S. and will join Enchanted Hills the week August 3, 2014 for a very special blind music academy limited to 20 students.

If you are a serious blind musician or are thinking of entering the profession, this academy will introduce you to new ways you can write down your own music, read the works of others, and generally gain the capacity necessary to compete for and win employment in the music field.

Of course the Academy will be more than cool software and recording. Music professionals will join in to talk about what it’s like to be in the business, and participants will likely stay up into the evening improvising and jamming around the pool, campfire and our new redwood grove performance space.

The Enchanted Hills Music Academy will draw young motivated blind and visually-impaired participants from around the nation. Attendance will be limited to 20, so please make arrangements to apply for a place at your early convenience.

Imagine a week just to be a musician. One entire week to do nothing but eat, sleep and breathe music with time to play, sing, read, write, arrange, record and just jam. Where else can you hang out with fellow blind and low vision musicians and meet with a staff of people who are there to support you on your musical journey? And where else can you do it all in a place where there’s so much sun, a refreshing pool to jump into, hiking trails, good food and those enchanted trees that welcome you.

The Academy is open for blind and visually impaired musicians 14 to 25 years old that have the temperament and interest level in music to spend a week of the summer focusing exclusively on learning more about how to read, write, arrange and perform music.

When: August 3 through August 9, 2014
Where: Enchanted Hills Camp
Cost for the week, all-inclusive: $300
(Limited scholarships will be made available)

To sign up you must contact Taccarra Burrell at 451-694-7310 or ehc@old.lighthouse-sf.org no later than Monday, July 28.