WAVERLY - The introduction did not go well.

Julie Pauley joined the Don Bosco High School band two years ago. She was 16 at the time, making her - musically speaking - a relatively late bloomer.

"I went six months and quit."

Pauley returned, though, and discovered something.

"I fell in love with clarinet music, and I wanted to learn everything about it."

Not just the notes. Not just the mechanics of fingering and holding a flat chin. But everything, all things, clarinet.

Her instructor, Myron Mikita, knew such a place. Six years ago, he started the Eastern Iowa Clarinet Camp.

"I just felt there needed to be a camp for clarinets," he says. "It's been my dream for many, many years."

Mikita developed the concept after attending a workshop devoted to his favorite instrument. The Chicago Symphony hosted that event at De Paul University. He noticed a problem, though.

"I got it in my mind not everyone can come to this high-powered camp," Mikita says.

So he fashioned his own at Don Bosco in Gilbertville. Mikita has been the private Catholic school's instrumental music instructor for 16 years.

The first Eastern Iowa Clarinet Camp attracted eight young musicians and their single-reed instruments. Participants commuted from their homes each day.

Eric Wachmann, a professor of music at Wartburg College and an advanced clarinet player, suggested a change was in order if the camp was to grow. He offered to help bring Mikita's idea to campus.

"He said, 'If we want this to go, we better move it to Wartburg,'" Mikita remembers.

This year, 20 young clarinet players lived in dorms. Three others commuted from nearby towns. Another - Norman Sinclair - spent the week in a motorhome.

Sinclair, 72, and his wife, Lois, travel from Venice, Fla., each year. Norman, a retired elementary school music teacher, rehearses with the students, offers guidance and hones his craft listening to professionals.

"I need all the tips I can get," he says.

Lois Sinclair, meanwhile, volunteers as manager of the camp music store, selling accessories for the complete clarinet player.

Most of the students live in Iowa, but the class of 2007 also represented Minnesota, Illinois and Pennsylvania. A teenager from Serbia expressed interest via e-mail.

"This year we're starting to branch out," Mikita says.

Total immersion

The unifying force is an instrument capable of hollow and haunting sounds - or honks that mimic a Canada goose when a musician's lips and reed work at odds.

" … Which can still be frustrating," Pauley says.

The positive end of the spectrum hooks and holds advocates.

"The tone is kind of like looking into tinted blue water," Sinclair says.

A German, Johann Denner, and his son, Jacob, frequently get credit for inventing the clarinet, perhaps as early as 1700. They took an earlier instrument, the chalumeau, added a register key and fashioned the distinctive flared bell at the bottom.

In any event, the clarinet shows up in arrangements by the world's greatest composers: Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Haydn, Bach, Handel and Brahms.

Enthusiasts claim the versatile woodwind is equally at home playing a supporting role in a symphony or orchestra or at center stage with a Dixieland band or jazz ensemble. And it is the latter genres of music that produced the most widely recognized players: Benny Goodman, Pete Fountain and Artie Shaw.

"You can do a lot with a clarinet. And it's a very pretty instrument," Pauley says.

But spending a week studying the clarinet and its related topics, subtopics and sub-subtopics does strike some of Kristine Smith's friends as an odd notion. Sessions this week touched on the history of the clarinet; the range of instruments in the clarinet family and the relative advantages of plastic versus wooden reeds.

"The people that know me well know if I wasn't here with my clarinet, I would be at home with my clarinet," she says.

Smith, a 20-year-old from Indianola, is a junior at Wartburg studying music and elementary education. At clarinet camp, she serves as a counselor and explains the experience more in terms of relationships than music.

"I'm going to be with other people who have common interests," she says.

Besides Mikita and Wachmann, camp faculty this year included Michael Chesher, associate professor of music at Luther College, and Kelly Burke, a music professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. David and Mary Smith and Steve Tripolino, members of the Sugar Daddys Jazz Band, also shared their skills.

"Not being a real big mecca, we've been very fortunate to get some big-name artists," Mikita says.

Total immersion with top talent means going places not always available to clarinet students.

"It's almost magical when we give a concert or the music clicks for the first time," Kristine Smith says.

Five long days, though, can be a physical challenge. Instruction begins at 8 a.m. daily. Lights are supposed to dim at 11:15 p.m.

"That first day, I know everybody was tired. The clarinets were on our faces basically all day," says Jessica Daker, 21, of Edgewood.

She is a senior in music education at Wartburg and next year will begin student teaching at Don Bosco with Mikita.

Pauley also acknowledges a relationship fostered during two camps.

"When I have a bad day, I go to my clarinet."

Contact Dennis Magee at (319) 291-1451 or dennis.magee@wcfcourier.com.