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Marena Salerno Collins & Jack Keckler High Schoolers of Rock Seventeen-year-olds Marena Salerno Collins and Jack Keckler each play more than five instruments. Marena, who moved to the valley from Washington’s Whidbey Island when she was fourteen, started with the violin when she was five and has since picked up the viola, the saxophone, and the bassoon. She’s also dabbled with piano and voice lessons. “I always come back to the low-resonance instruments; you can feel the vibrations throughout your body,” she says. Jack started with the cello in his mandatory sixth-grade music class and has gone on to learn his way around the guitar and the bass. “I can pretend I know what I’m doing on other stringed instruments, too,” he says. Together, as Closed Set, Jack and Marena play classical, jazz, Django, Celtic, and pretty much anything else that catches their fancy. “Rock is hard to do with just two people, though,” Marena says. 38
JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE SUMMER 2013
Q: How’d you two start playing together? A (Marena): I joined the high school orchestra last year [the 2011-12 school year] and my friends who were already in it told me I should be friends with Jack because ‘he plays a bunch of instruments, too.’ It’s amazing it has only been a year. I feel like I’ve known him my entire life. We’re best friends. It’s weird how life can do that when you’re young.