Jon, bottom right, with his ArtsFest delegation.

I returned to the JCC Maccabi ArtsFest program this year not knowing what to expect. I had a lot of fun at last year’s ArtsFest, but I was still unsure of how this year’s would compare. Generally speaking, ArtsFest is a combination of workshops, performances, exhibitions and social activities for creative-minded teens.

Although I was going back to the same camp and doing the same thing (rock and pop band), the whole experience was very much a mystery to me. Many things stayed constant: I traveled to a faraway land—Fairfax, Va.—and met many new people. I had the same artists-in-residence working with me, led by the amazing Josh Nelson once again. And the food was still bad. It was really bad. In fact, for most meals I snuck upstairs to the café of the university hosting the program to buy real food.

But this year’s ArtsFest was different in many ways. For one thing, I was playing music with new people. During and after the camp, I thought a lot about how great the chemistry in my band was. Here we were, seven complete strangers slotted into a band together for four days, and told to prepare and play three songs for our final performance.

Our musical tastes couldn’t have been more different—one kid loved Metallica, another Bob Marley, another Guns N’ Roses and yet another Eric Clapton. I’ve been in so many situations like that in the past, where the band ends up not working because of the huge conflict of tastes within it. I don’t know whether it was us or the unique situation, but somehow our band just sat down and played tunes without (too many) bumps in the road. The tunes we played during the final performance were “Get Back” by The Beatles, an original tune we wrote sitting cross-legged in a circle, called “I Think of You,” and “Paradise City” by Guns N’ Roses.

The compromise and general goodwill of the band is something that amazed me. I was so grateful for it, because to anyone who has ever been in a rock band, it’s a big breath of fresh air. And at the end of the final performance, with the entire camp going nuts and random cute girls who I’d never met hugging me and telling me I was great (not complaining!), what I was really thinking about was going over to my band mates and saying, “You were great, man.” (And yes, the cute girls.)

ArtsFest somehow combines—in four days—an excellent tutelage in the art form of your choice with a deep sense of kinship with the people around you. It was one of the best musical and social experiences of my life, and I can’t wait to go back next year.

For more info on ArtsFest, visit jccmaccabiartsfest.org.

Jonathan Cohen is 15 years old and lives in Providence, R.I. He goes to the Wheeler School and enjoys playing music. He’s also a member of the JVibe Teen Advisory Board.