Archives

RISCA’s major arts education initiative

Blog

An invitation from Randy Rosenbaum, Executive Director of RISCA:

I'm happy to report that the Rhode Island Council on the Arts is planning to announce
a major new grant initiative on Monday morning, January 25, at 9 AM in
the lobby of the Providence Performing Arts Center, and I hope you
will join us for this announcement.

During our planning process we heard from many people about the
importance of arts education. All kids need access to quality arts
education, and part of that education is being able to attend arts and
cultural events. But schools are in dire financial straits, and field
trips to concerts, museums, and other cultural programs have become
exceedingly rare.

On Monday, RISCA will announce a new grant program to support the
cost of school buses and coverage for classroom teachers which we hope
will once again make it possible for students to attend cultural arts
events.

U.S. Senator Senator Whitehouse will be
there, along with State Commissioner of Education Deborah Gist, State Rep. Peter Kilmartin and Francisco
Noya, resident conductor of the Rhode Island Philharmonic. The more
people we can get to come, the better. So please attend, invite your
staff, board members and supporters, and forward this message to
others. We'll see you then.

Montgomery Music

Blog

From: Jessie Montgomery
To: Phase II & Phase III

To prepare for the Musical Workshop in March and the Youth Salon in April, I have posted the Phase II/III CMW variation of my new piece on myspace so that you
can listen to it freely. I encourage you to listen to it in
order to learn it better, as some parts might LOOK rhythmically
challenging on the page, but I think if you listen, it'll all come
together fine.

Please keep in mind, it's a midi recording of me
plunking away on the piano, so it's not perfection, but all the notes
and rhythms are there. 🙂

My "myspace" is:
http://www.myspace.com/jessiemontgomery

Happy New year and good wishes!!

Jessie

Introducing CMW’s Media Lab

Blog

Thanks to grants awarded by The Rhode Island Foundation and the Champlin Foundations, Media Lab is a new CMW initiative that will teach students audio and visual media skills in order to:

  1. document CMW activities
  2. reflect on their learning

  3. create new artistic work

Media Lab is inspired
in part by 08-09 season projects such as the DBR Residency Reflections and Anthem videos, as well as the CMW evaluation led by Dennie Palmer Wolf, and a recent project that I did with RISD students. Participants will
work in small group and one-on-one settings to learn to use still and video
cameras and
audio tools to produce a variety of content for multiple audiences.

1. Interested students will have the opportunity to create new
artistic work, from electronic music to videos, building on CMW supplemental courses like the weekly Music Lab, where students learn to improvise and compose music.

2. Through the addition of Media Lab, all CMW students will accumulate evidence of their learning in electronic "portfolios." Evidence could include recordings of their performances collected over the school year, photographs of their bow holds, short videos they create reflecting
on their own learning, and much more. Here's an example with a Phase I student:

The objective for generating this material is to
help CMW students better understand their growth as musicians as well as to
collect content for portfolios that will help them apply for
competitive opportunities (such as Phase II, Phase III, summer music camps, or college).

3. Several CMW teens interested in documentation can study
photography with me, with the goal of being hired to document PSQ
concerts and eventually be hired outside the organization for
similar work.   

The first semester of Media Lab will begin this month with
an electronic music composition course, which I will co-teach with Brown
University Cogut Fellow Betsey Biggs. I look forward to sharing Media Lab projects with you soon!

-Jori Ketten, Communications & Documentation Consultant

CMW on From The Top

Blog

The NPR radio program From The Top briefly featured Community MusicWorks in a special Martin Luther King Jr. Day edition of the show recently recorded at the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston.

Fromthetop

The "audio postcard" segment about CMW–including interviews with Sebastian, Kirby, and Louis–begins at 17:14. Click here to visit From The Top's audio archive page and then select Show #208.