Erin Busch, Composer and Artistic Director, The Young Women Composers Camp

My name's Erin Bush. I am the founder and Artistic Director of the Young Women Composers Camp. So the Young Women Composers Camp is a two week music camp for girls and non-binary students ages 14 to 19. Takes place here at Temple University on the main campus in July for two weeks, and while they're here students learn about music composition, music theory, improvisation, orchestration, all these different topics that are important to know as composers. They meet with guest composers who come in from the nearby area who are successful in the field, and they all compose a new piece that's premiered at the end of the festival. So our days are pretty jam packed. Classes start at 9:00, they go until 4:00. In the morning we have our set classes, so every morning they'll have composition. They'll have a theory course, and they all sing in a choir where they're performing works written by women throughout history. And then in the afternoon we have a variety of guests that come in and teach about their specific topic. So we'll have a string quartet come in and demonstrate their instruments. We'll have a guest composer come in and present some of her works. We'll have different types of workshops centered around these different topics. One thing that I think is really important is a community of other women and peers who are composing, who have similar goals to them. A lot of the students who have come to me have no peers, male or female in their community that are working on the same kinds of things that they're interested in. And so I also hope that they get mentors that can help them throughout their next stage of their lives and their careers. And then more tangibly they're also going to get the experience of working with professional musicians, of having a recording of a piece that they wrote in just two weeks, and all of the knowledge that they gain from the coursework as well. It's so personal and so different for everyone. For me I really am starting from a place where I find a sound world, some pitches that I feel really drawn to, or maybe a text that is inspiring me for the piece. I generally write at the piano. So a lot of the early process days is just finding some harmonies, chords, maybe a melody that I'm drawn to, or a specific timbre of the instrument that I'm writing for. And then the process grows from there, but I do a lot of sketching by hand.