"I don't know of another organization that's answering the question of what music and musicians are for in a better way than CMW. It is an honor to be associated even in a peripheral way." –Pianist and CMW benefactor Jonathan Biss, addressing an adoring audience during his all-Beethoven recital at The RISD Museum on Sunday, May 20.

More photos by Jori in CMW's Flickr account.

CMW favorite Eric Booth was invited to give the keynote address at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston last month. He treated the audience to four distinctly different performances of "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams, a wonderful exercise that he shared with CMW staff during his two-day residency in Providence last year.

You can download Eric's address here or read it online here.

-Heath Marlow, Managing Director

Donald Tarallo, CMW's graphic design consultant since 2003, has been awarded a prestigious fellowship by Bridgewater State University to spend the 12-13 academic year engaged in a project that Don has created to benefit the Providence Youth Arts Collaborative. Below are excerpts from the text of Don's successful proposal.

I will devote my time to employ graphic design toward creating positive social change for youth living in the urban neighborhoods of Providence, RI. The change my project will embody addresses a paradigm shift taking place in the graphic design community as the focus moves from design as a practice that fuels a market to the awareness that graphic design is a social practice and that it can be vehicle for powerful and sustainable social change. This project embraces a culture of heightened social awareness and practical application of visual means to address real world problems.

I will work within a regionally established network of after-school arts programs organized under a body called the Providence Youth Arts Collaborative (PYAC). This network of organizations is regarded as one of the top programs in the United States for their efforts in offering quality after-school arts education to urban youth.

My project will entail working with a team of youth from this network to investigate how graphic design can act as a tool of intervention directing youth away from negative life choices toward positive ones. I will investigate how graphic design can intervene at points in life where youth are confronted with important choices through mapping various social systems in the Providence community (education, social/peer groups, cultural, recreational, etc.) and identifying opportunities for intervention and persuasion. The results will yield a method and approach to graphic design as a civically engaged practice encapsulated in a process book or video and a visual outreach campaign that accomplishes the above mentioned interventions.

Congratulations Don, and we're looking forward to seeing how this project will unfold!

Whew! The last 6 weeks in CMW's Media Lab were a blur. In this short time, we came up with an idea for a movie, created characters, wrote out scenes individually, and combined them into a script. We talked about the mood of each scene and created (and recorded) music on our instruments to score the scenes. Then we filmed the scenes, revised our script a little, created some new music to fit the revisions, and put it all together into our final movie… the Pillow Monster!!!! Enjoy here.

-Jori Ketten, Media Lab Director

OUR HEARTFELT THANKS FOR YOUR GENEROSITY!

The Concert for Hope & Healing to Benefit Charles Sherba was a phenomenal success! The outpouring of support and generosity exhibited by the hundreds of contributors to the Charles Sherba benefit fund has been awe-inspiring. As much as we would like to thank each donor individually, it will be impossible to do so. Please accept our sincere gratitude for your gifts as we continue to pray for Chuck's complete recovery.

-Amy Goldstein, Aurea Board President

Editor: We hear that Chuck is doing well, and planning to resume performing activities this summer, including an Aurea concert and performances with the Vermont Symphony.

Commencement Forum – Education, Music, and Possibility: CMW at 15

From Brown University's website: The educational goals of CMW include creating what American philosopher Maxine Greene calls “openings,” where young people, through experiences with the arts, conceive of new possibilities for their lives and futures. CMW founder Sebastian Ruth ’97 describes the history of this organization, and discusses the educational experience with CMW alumni Sidney Argueta ’13, and Natasha Rosario ’16, followed by a musical performance.

Click here to view Sebastian's commencement forum.

Photos by Jori

Congratulations to Ariana and Robin on completing CMW’s two-year Fellowship Program. We wish you well in all of your endeavors! Photos by Jori, video by Liz.