Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp

Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp
International Blue Lake group on stage in Germany
Genre	Classical and contemporary
Location(s)	Twin Lake, Michigan
Years active	1966 - present
Founded by	Fritz & Gretchen Stansell
Website
www.bluelake.org

Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp is a Michigan nonprofit organization located in the Manistee National Forest that provides summer fine arts camp and international exchange programs in music, art, dance, and drama.

The Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp was founded as a non-profit organization in 1966 by the Stansell family, who remain the multi-generational proprietors of the institution. The camp is located on approximately 1200 acres in the Manistee National Forest in Michigan. It can host 4500 5th through 12th grade students across several 12-day sessions each summer. It operates FM radio stations locally and in Grand Rapids that are National Public Radio affiliates. For Central campers, several options for fine arts are offered, including theater, band, choir, art, dance, and many others.

Blue Lake also offers adult camp programs. Rather than the rustic cabins of the camp, adult musicians find accommodation at local hotels. Like the youth programs, adult campers take part in daily instruction on their instrument as well as ensemble rehearsals. Access to the camp’s recreational, elective instructional, and regular concert programs is available to all ages as well.

The youth camps are informative and offer amazing instruction in the arts while maintaining a summer camp environment.

Blue Lake hosts international exchange students in the arts as well as organizing several ensembles of American students to travel to Europe and perform each year. These ensembles include, but are not limited to, concert band, jazz band, orchestra, and choir. These exchanges serve to expose students to other cultures and have been cited as “outstanding representatives of the United States”. The camp has also initiated such experiments in multi-cultural cooperation as the Blue Lake in Bavaria concert band which was formed out of a mixture of American and European junior and senior high school students to rehearse and perform together over the course of a month. There is a meeting held every session of summer camp to notify campers of the International exchange. All campers are required to attend, despite there being a lack of an art or theatre program.

Prior to the founding of Blue Lake, Leonard Falcone, baritone virtuoso and Director of Bands at Michigan State University, had conducted many Youth Music at Michigan State summer camps in conjunction with, and support of, the Michigan School Band and Orchestra Association. At the urging of Fritz Stansell, Falcone shifted his focus to aiding the program at Blue Lake and became a regular staff member/artist in residence. Falcone would be joined later by other notables of the music education and concert band world, such as composers John Barnes Chance and Václav Nelhýbel.