Eleven years ago, the Emerson String Quartet was auditioning younger
ensembles for a training program at the Hartt School of Music, in
Connecticut. Piles of performance tapes came in, and the Emersons
decided to listen to them while driving between destinations on a
European tour.

One tape, from a young Toronto quartet, juxtaposed the
expected Beethoven with a contemporary Canadian work in which the
players were required to yell at the top of their lungs. The screaming
began just as the Emersons were negotiating a difficult stretch of
Alpine road.

"We'd heard this perfectly good Beethoven, and we were
saying, 'Very nice,' when the screaming started, and we almost lost
control of the car," the violinist Philip Setzer recalled. "We could
all have died right then and there. Of course, we had to meet the crazy
kids who sent in the tape."

Message for Sebastian: According to a recent study that is available at Third Sector New England, sabbaticals for nonprofit leaders can be "a relatively inexpensive but
highly productive capacity-building tool that yields measurable
results."

This study "exposes the myth that an executive sabbatical will be a
chaotic disruption, finding instead that the creative disruption of a
well-planned sabbatical can be productive for the entire leadership of
an organization."

Side effects may include an increase in organizational capacity as staff assume new roles, strengthened governance resulting from planning for the sabbatical, and rejuvenated executive directors with fresh ideas and perspectives. Do not continue for longer than three months without consulting a physician or Liz Hollander.

The Abreu Fellows Program at the New England Conservatory is recruiting its second class of ten Fellows to begin in October 2010.

Find information here. Applications are due by April 1.

"A lot of social justice work is at its root addressing problems
associated with exclusion. Poverty, injustice, racism—it's
always one group separated from another. And music is about connecting
people and bringing people together."

This quote from MNS founder Kiff Gallagher is printed in a recent article in GOOD Magazine about the pilot project that Musician National Service has established in New Orleans, one of four host cities around the country.

-Heath Marlow, CMW staff

Information about the May 20-23 Institute for Musicianship and Public Service is now available on the CMW website. Applications are due March 15. CMW is able to offer four full-tuition and travel scholarships for successful applicants who are alumni of the Sphinx Competition, thanks to generous support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

An invitation from Rachel, on behalf of the CMW Pavement Raiders:

On Saturday, March 20th at 11 AM, a CMW team of runners and walkers will take part in the St. Pats 5K in downtown Providence. If
you like to run or walk (it's a distance of just over 3 miles), you're
invited to join us!

CMW Pavement Raiders (September 2008)

Through this event, we are raising funds to help pay for CMW's 2010
Summer Camp. If you can commit to raising more than $25 by asking family
or friends to sponsor your run/walk, Community MusicWorks will reimburse
your $25 race registration fee.

If you're interested, or if you have friends or colleagues who are
interested, please call or email me, and I'll get you all of the
information you need to sign up with our team. We're using the website
Firstgiving.com in order to specifically reach out to friends, colleagues, and relatives
around the country to solicit online donations. Last year, this we raised approximately
$1,650, and we hope to break $2,000 this time.

Check out our special 5K race sponsorship website here:
http://www.firstgiving.com/cmw5k

Looking forward to it — I hope you can join us!

-Rachel Panitch, CMW staff

Editor's note: As of February 8th, five staff members, two board members, and two program parents are already signed up.

More photos by Jori in CMW's Flickr account.

More photos by Jori in CMW's Flickr account.

Photos by Jori in CMW's Flickr account.

At Saturday's free concert at Providence College, CMW raised $769 to support the rebuilding efforts in Jacmel, Haiti. Jesse has a special connection to Jacmel because he spent two weeks teaching and performing in Haiti last summer, including at the Dessaix-Baptiste Music School.

Jesse announced from the stage that, even though Jacmel's music school was damaged and some students' homes were leveled, he had just learned that the orchestra met last week to rehearse for the first time since the earthquake.

-Heath Marlow, CMW staff