Michael Arrom Tapped for Third Grammy Camp

Update: For a third straight year, Warren resident Michael Arrom will be attending the Grammy Camp for high school students. The camp includes sessions with top studio and recording artists in Los Angeles and Nashville—only 136 students will attend this year's camp.

Below, is a story Warren Patch reported when Michael was selected to attend last year.

Original story: 

Keyboardist Michael Arrom has been busy working on his chops: when he's not practicing at Red Bank's Rockit For Kids rehearsal studio, or studying with Billy Joel's backup keyboardist David Rosenthal, he's learning the accordion for a Pingry School musical.

You could say the Pingry junior is serious about music, but that overlooks his upbeat and relaxed approach to what is becoming a promising career.

Now Michael, son of Smoke Rise Drive residents Paula and Carlos Arrom, has been selected for an encore week at the GRAMMY Camp, a 10-day intensive study in music recording for high school students held at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles.

Michael first attended last year after a friend had been accepted and attended the camp, but with only 101 students going out of 1,000 accepted auditions this year, being selected to return is high praise.

He said he believes he'll be one of seven keyboardists at the camp, where, as he put it, "I'll be dropped in a room and in five or 10 minutes, we'll be playing music."

Since the focus of the camp is on recorded music, the camp follows a format similar to what studio musicians encounter, requiring the ability to play mulitple styles of music, be proficient at reading music and to be able to quickly absorb music.

"At GRAMMY Camp, they make you do everything," Michael said. For example, last year he attended a session where a combo he was assigned to was given one hour to learn, practice and record a Taylor Swift song.

He added at the end of the camp, the various combos perform in a concert attended by many industry notables, and the best of the perfmances are selected for a CD.

"Hopefully, a song we record will be on the CD," he said.

If it doesn't, however, that doesn't mean you won't be able to hear his work: two songs Michael wrote keyboard accompaniments for are under consideration for inclusion on an upcoming recording by British chart-topping band Blake, recently featured on NBC's "The Today Show" during the coverage of the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Kate Middleton. The songs, "Living on Sunshine" and "Dancing on Top of the World," mark a move from the group's classical background towards a more pop recording.

"It's a dream," he said of having his songs selected for recording.

He credits much of his success to his early classical training with Michelle Kuo, of Morris Plains, and songwriter-producer Marc Swersky, and Rockit band director Bruce Gallipani.

As for what he hopes to learn at his second camp, he said he really just wants to "absorb as much as possible"—and possibly get send to the dean's office.

"Keith Urban was the dean last year," Michael said. "We never saw him and I wondered if I got into trouble if they'd send me to the dean."

To see a video of Michael playing Jeff Beck's "Freeway Jam" on a special MIDI controller at the Count Basie Theater during a Rockit concert, click here.