Cazadero Performing Arts Camp (also known as Cazadero Music Camp, or Cazadero) is a performing arts camp located in the Sonoma redwoods in Northern California, United States. Established in 1957 by then Berkeley High School band director Bob Lutt (who eventually was made executive director of the Berkeley Symphony), the first campers were a mixture of Berkeley High teens and members of the San Francisco Symphony.
Since 1957, the camp has become a significant influence in every facet of San Francisco Bay Area music, including the San Francisco Symphony, the orchestras for the San Francisco Opera and the San Francisco Ballet, and Tower of Power, an Oakland, California 10-member horn-based soul band formed in 1968. Caz faculty were the first to conceive of a professional baroque chamber orchestra composed entirely of period instruments, resulting in the 1981 creation of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra by harpsichordist Laurette Goldberg. The camp, which sits atop the late 19th century location of the then-infamous Bohemian Grove, maintains a signature suspension bridge over which more than 100,000 young musicians have crossed.
Campers also enjoy 'downtime activities' like swimming, ping pong, basketball, guided hikes and more.
Famous quotes containing the words performing, arts and/or camp:
“And no one, it seemed, had had the presence of mind
To initiate proceedings or stop the wheel
From the number it was backing away from as it stopped:
It was performing prettily; the puncture stayed unseen....”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“For me, the principal fact of life is the free mind. For good and evil, man is a free creative spirit. This produces the very queer world we live in, a world in continuous creation and therefore continuous change and insecurity. A perpetually new and lively world, but a dangerous one, full of tragedy and injustice. A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.”
—Joyce Cary (1888–1957)
“Grandfather, you were the pillar of fire in front of the camp and now we are left in the camp alone, in the dark; and we are so cold and so sad.”
—Noa Ben-Artzi Philosof (b. 1978)