As the Fellows Quartet prepares for this weekend’s performances, violinist David Rubin reflects on a piece by Leoš Janáček.
Several months ago, I wrote for this blog about Aaron Copland’s violin sonata. My affection for that piece was uncomplicated. Every layer of meaning – biography, reception history, extramusical associations – made it richer, easier to love. Now, preparing for this weekend’s concerts at Everett Stage & Bell Street Chapel, I find myself in the opposite position. The deeper we delve into Leoš Janáček’s Intimate Letters, the more ambivalent I feel. What do you do when the circumstances surrounding a piece of music push you away, rather than draw you in?
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When I put bow to string and try to come to terms with the physical demands of this music, I quickly fall under its spell. Everything about it is unique.
The melodies. Little cells, packed with emotional energy and ready to combine, break apart, metamorphose. They have density of meaning, like Wagnerian leitmotif, but also a plainspoken quality – they burrow into your memory and haunt for days on end. Janáček spent the better part of his career trying to enshrine the Czech language in musical prose, and you can hear that effort. It’s easy to imagine words standing behind every note.
The rhythm. For most of Intimate Letters, one or more of the four players is busy shredding some frenzied, repeating pattern (in musical lingo, we call such repetition “ostinato”). Every so often, those ostinatos will converge – or clash – to dizzying effect. It’s a cliche to say that a work of small-scale chamber music is “symphonic in scope,” but in this case it rings true. The force of this combined rhythmic energy can be overwhelming. A cataclysm for four players – as written on the page, it’s almost too much to realize. Too much for a little box of wood, strung with steel or gut.
The texture. People often talk about “color” in concert music, whether in reference to the harmonic language of Ravel or Debussy, full of sensory appeal, or the orchestration of Berlioz and Rimsky-Korsakov, rife with surprise. Janáček is one of the few composers who makes me feel texture just as strongly as color. A melody blurred by a rasping “ponticello” – the bow pulled against surface of the bridge – is it a memory of something precious past, or a portent of some idyllic future? A note so unexpected and poignant that you want to delay the vibrato or press the bow – things our teachers tell us not to do – because that’s what it sounds like when a singer’s voice aches, when music is spoken rather than sung. Sweetness tempered with grit. Beautiful and ugly sounds rendered in the same instant. That’s what I mean by texture.
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But when I think about this piece, my relationship to it sours. Lately, I keep having the same experience, or variations of it. I’ll be humming one of its tunes, setting up the office for teaching… in the pause before the melody’s repeat, my brain will offer the same nagging reminder: remember what this music meant to the composer. Remember the ugliness behind those notes…
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“Oh, it’s a work as if carved out of living flesh. I think I won’t write a more profound and truer one.”
Leoš Janáček intended this piece as a musical portrait of his decade-long, one-sided, imagined love affair with a distant woman, Kamila Stösslová. Kamila was nearly forty years younger than Janáček himself, and a complete stranger. The two met briefly in 1917, while Janáček was on vacation. She was married, and did not return his interest in the slightest… but over the next ten years he penned hundreds – hundreds! – of letters, in which he poured out his soul, proclaimed his ardor, and declared her to be his muse.
When Janáček created this second string quartet – in a frenzy of creative energy, exactly ninety years ago – he was enshrining this private history in music, immortalizing it. At first, he considered treating the piece as a public declaration, by giving it an explicit title: Love Letters. A friend talked him down from the ledge – that’s how we ended up with the more elusive Intimate Letters. In contemporaneous writing to Kamila, Janáček pointed to particular scenes in the quartet as pictures of their imagined life together – one movement a depiction of the son they would have had; another a portrayal of the composer conquering all obstacles to their union (“the ground shook”). You can’t make this stuff up! Well, I guess Janáček could, but… the saying still holds!
We’ve all had unrequited loves. We’ve all preferred the contours of fantasy to the disappointments of everyday life. But to invest so much of your life’s meaning in another, indifferent person – that seems like such a sadness! I cringe when this piece is discussed as some sort of hyper-romantic gesture. This isn’t love. That requires two real, flawed people. Kamila isn’t present in these pages – only Janáček’s picture of her. His fetishized, idealized woman.
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And for me, that’s the catch, the entry point to this bizarre artwork, only briefly visible. When I think about enigmatic Kamila… then I think about men chasing women who don’t want them. And I don’t want to hear any more. But if I acknowledge that only one personality is truly enshrined in this music – Leoš Janáček himself, and all of his desires – then I can begin to accept it as sympathetic, flawed, and deeply moving.
–David Rubin, CMW Fellow 2017-2019
Join us for one (or both!) of these performances:
Saturday, March 3 at 7pm
Everett Stage
9 Duncan Street, Providence
$20 suggested donation
Sunday, March 4 at 3pm
Bell Street Chapel
5 Bell Street in the West End of Providence
$20 suggested donation
Join us for a post-concert community dinner!
Since graduating from the CMW Fellowship Program, Ariana Falk (Cello Fellow, 2010-2012) has served as Education Director for the Worcester Chamber Music Society and runs Neighborhood Strings, a program that provides free music lessons and programming to youth from Worcester’s neediest neighborhoods. Here, Ariana updates us on the program.
Neighborhood Strings is now in its sixth year with two program sites and over 50 kids in the program. The new “Green Group” spent the fall learning basic theory and solfege and joyfully received instruments at the annual presentation ceremony, now held in Clark University’s beautiful Tilton Hall. Also at Clark, 14 students enrolled in Community Music and Social Action, a course co-taught by Neighborhood Strings instructors Ariana, Peter, and Dean Matt Malsky, are serving as mentors this semester for our youth while learning about the philosophical ideas behind social justice and music.
One of the most moving things to witness as a teacher is when students take off with the material we give them and widen their own worlds.
One longtime Neighborhood Strings student, Peter K., has been doing that this fall in an inspiring way. Peter has been playing the viola since the very beginning of Neighborhood Strings, as a fourth-grader. As a student of “big Peter” Sulski, he has really taken off, reaching a level of comfort and joy on his instrument that has allowed him to move onto harder and more satisfying music.
Now a high school sophomore, Peter has come to ChamberFest (our music camp) three times and played works by Corelli, Handel, Mozart alongside advanced players his age and older. Most exciting – last fall, he took on the challenge of playing in Clark Sinfonia, a college-level ensemble, where he played the entire program last month as a member of the viola section. I loved watching him sit with the college students, studying his scores and standing proudly on the stage of Razzo Hall. Any younger Neighborhood Strings student can simply look at Peter to see how music can send them on an amazing journey.
Coming up, all students in our program will get on stage in Worcester’s gorgeous Mechanics Hall to play at our group’s annual family concert in front of a sold-out crowd of 800 people (the opening act to Peter and the Wolf). The NS Club, our team leadership group, received a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for a number of youth-led concerts around the community, a recording, and a TV appearance. And for the first time, all Neighborhood Strings students will be invited to attend our two-week summer Chamber Fest camp and mingle with advanced chamber music players from around the region. By the way, we welcome students from other programs looking for a similar experience and will do our best to provide scholarships. A lot to look forward to!
–Ariana Falk
Director, Neighborhood Strings
Learn more about Neighborhood Strings here.
Cellist Lauren Latessa has spent her post-CMW Fellowship time creating The Music Project (and getting married: congratulations, Lauren and Ryan!). Recently, Lauren updated us on the project’s developments.
“This project saved my life. Suddenly I realized the arch of my life could go up again. I found something I loved and could give back to.” — a participating senior.
Hello CMW friends!
As many of you know, I have spent the last three years creating and developing a music program for a large retirement community in Rockville, MD. I am a full-time employee and feel very lucky to work with talented, thoughtful colleagues across the artistic spectrum. Each day I learn more about how to harness music’s power to provide joy, meaning, and texture to a time of life that is often filled with loneliness and isolation.
In this video, senior resident Marjorie talks about the impact that the Music Project has had in her life: “I think the only thing that keeps you alive is learning new things.”
In February of 2017, this project took a huge step forward as I welcomed Sara Matayoshi and Jessica McKee and formed the Iris Piano Trio. Three days a week we collaborate with elders from four retirement communities, working in independent living, assisted living and memory care contexts. Each year we curate an annual rotation of concerts, open rehearsals, participatory group programs and one-on-one sessions designed specifically for these communities.
This past year has been an incredible journey, full of peaks and valleys as we’ve navigated our way through the different environments and found our voice as a trio. We are thrilled to now be embarking on our second year working at the intersection of creative placemaking and creative aging!
The trio is just putting together our website (www.irispianotrio.com) and newsletters. Send an email to contact@irispianotrio.com if you’d like to be added to our monthly newsletter!
Wishing you all the best in 2018,
Lauren Latessa
CMW Cello Fellow 2012-2014
Learn more about The Music Project’s day-to-day activities in this blog post.
“The Last Supper” painting by Jessica Van Daam, on loan to the Trinity Brewhouse.
CMW Fellow and violinist Luke Fatora muses upon Beethoven as a pop culture icon.
Earlier this year, an unexpected downpour of cold rain unleashed itself as I was out for a walk. Passing by the Trinity Brewhouse on Fountain Street, I took refuge inside and found myself seated near a musician-themed mural riffing on The Last Supper. I was enjoying a nearby table’s particularly slurred conversation – its contents better left unexplored here – when it took a hard turn. One of the speakers interrupted a waitress, gesturing towards the mural hanging on the wall where Ludwig van Beethoven (not to confused with Beethoven the dog but more on that later) was stoically seated next to Billie Holiday in the company of other musicians like Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon. He asked “Who’s the guy with the curly hair??”
I found myself thinking back to this experience recently at CMW’s Phase II students’ weekly dinner and discussion. The students were exploring the interdependent relationship between a piece of art and the settings that a culture places it in. Later that night I grappled with unanswerable questions as I tossed and turned. How would Beethoven have responded to someone telling him that two centuries into the future, Americans would scarf down nachos and beer under his quasi-religious image in a brewpub in Providence, RI? How about being told that Andy Warhol, an iconic 20th century American artist, would designate Beethoven as the figure from western classical music to join the likes of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, and Chairman Mao, as portrait subjects? Finally, what would he have had to say about the movie Beethoven released in the 1990’s?? My guess is as good as anyone’s as to how Beethoven would have reacted to being told that his name would become synonymous with a Hollywood movie about the adventures of a goofy, slobbering, St. Bernard.
The composer’s canine namesake.
After entertaining these hypothetical reactions, we’re left with some serious questions. Why did Andy Warhol choose Beethoven over someone like Schubert or Tchaikovsky as an iconic portrait subject? Why is the comedic reboot of Lassie centered around a St. Bernard named Beethoven (the surface explanation is here) and not Schoenberg or Bach?
Warhol’s Beethoven
Beethoven was an incredibly forward thinking composer – so much so that nearly a century after he wrote his wild Grosse Fugue, composers such as Arnold Schoenberg would look back to it as a premonition of their own radical breaks with tradition. Are we to believe that Beethoven’s seat at the table of musical disciples in the Trinity Brewhouse is a result of his technical wizardry as a composer?
Another explanation lies in his easily accessible humanity. As many people know, Beethoven lost his hearing over the course of time and had a generally tough life. His struggles led him to rail against fate in his Fifth Symphony. There is hardly a more universal human experience than struggling with circumstances that are beyond our control. Beethoven’s loss of hearing is tragic and his response to continue living for the sake of creating art is certainly heroic (you can read about it in his own words in his famed Heiligenstadt Testament). This said, other composers, being human (for now…), have certainly also struggled with circumstances beyond their control.
Popular culture’s obsession with Beethoven (the composer) risks encapsulating his image in the opening bars of his 5th Symphony and “that epic part of the 9th symphony where people are singing about something in German.” Only a sliver of Beethoven’s humanity is seen when it is through this lens. Recently, I have been working through his Third op. 12 Piano and Violin sonata and have been enjoying how starkly it contrasts popular notions of what Beethoven should sound like (“bark bark bark baaaark!”). Beethoven began working on his op. 12 Piano and Violin sonatas in 1797; he was 27 years old and had been living in Vienna for 5 years. At that point, he was 5 years away from writing the Heiligenstadt Testament and presumably contemplating suicide in the face of his worsening deafness. The Heiligenstadt Testament details the agony of Beethoven’s depression but it also mentions his lifelong heightened sensitivity to “tender feelings of affection” and his general “love for man and feelings of benevolence.”
Ludwig Van Beethoven, composer and guy with the curly hair.
Beethoven’s Third Piano and Violin Sonata can be seen as stemming from these general underlying dispositions; it is brimming with a particularly sparkling and playful energy, never taking itself too seriously. The beginning and ending movements are strikingly joyful romps through E flat major. The second movement is an Adagio in C major that begins with a simple melody containing an emotional pureness that becomes transformed throughout the movement. The theme passes briefly through distant and more complicated emotional landscapes, emerging to playfully evade a committed return to its original character – one gets the sense that Beethoven is exploring what it feels like to make peace with an unattainable ideal’s imaginary nature. This is the side of Beethoven that, two centuries later, keeps me warm on a slushy February day. Beethoven’s ability to probe such an extreme range of emotion leaves me in awe of his (very human) ability to reach across time and space to connect with us and – most importantly – inspires me to stop reaching for my phone to check the latest news and reach for my violin instead.
–Luke Fatora
Please join us Thursday, February 15 at 7pm for the Sonata Series Event at RISD Museum’s Grand Gallery as Luke Fatora performs Beethoven (the composer) along with pianist Jeff Louie. The event also features violinist Jesse Holstein performing a composition by Amy Beach.
Join us Thursday, February 15 at 7pm for our Sonata Series Event featuring Jesse Holstein and Luke Fatora with guest pianist Jeff Louie. The evening’s program features a composition by Amy Beach. Here, Jesse talks about the composer and the piece he’ll perform at RISD Museum Grand Gallery.
A piece that has recently come into my orbit is the Sonata for Violin and Piano by Amy Beach. It was completely unknown to me before I performed it at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music last August. In the process of learning it, I became quite taken with the piece and subsequently asked my friend Jeff Louie to play it with me for the CMW Sonata Series Concert this February 15 at the RISD Museum at 7pm. If I may be permitted, perhaps a little background about Ms. Beach and the sonata.
Tucked between the Connecticut and Merrimack rivers in south-eastern New England lies the little town of Henniker, New Hampshire. Aside from being the birthplace of Red Sox legend Ted Williams, Henniker also lays claim as the birthplace of one of the most important figures in American classical music, Amy Marcy Cheney Beach.
 Composer Amy Beach
Born September 5, 1867, Amy Cheney exhibited prodigious musical talent on the piano and in composition from a very young age. She advanced far beyond what teaching was available in Henniker by age seven and in order to support Amy’s talent, the family moved to the Boston suburb of Chelsea in 1875. There, she studied piano with Carl Baermann, who was himself a piano student of Franz Liszt. While Amy did receive some composition and counterpoint coaching as a young teen, she was essentially an autodidact in composition her whole life. Impressively, her “Gaelic Symphony” of 1896 received its world-premier by the Boston Symphony and was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. This is a testament to her incredible gift of melody and intuitive ability as a composer.
When Amy was on the verge of international stardom as a pianist and composer, she got married at age eighteen to a prominent Boston surgeon, Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, twenty-four years her senior. As was the custom of the times, he limited her performing life to just a few recitals a year and Amy received no mentoring or tutoring as a composer. When Dr. Beach died in 1910, Amy began touring as a pianist and composer in Europe and was a tremendous success. She would return to America in 1914 and was a major figure in American Classical music until her death in 1944.
With Amy’s piano concerto appearances with the Boston Symphony as a teenager, she gained the attention of the BSO Concertmaster, Franz Kneisel. He invited her to perform the Schumann piano quintet with his string quartet in 1894 and he premiered her violin sonata in 1897 with Ms. Beach at the piano. Arguably the greatest Romantic Period American violin sonata, Beach’s piece is a dramatic big-boned sonata with a tremendous scope of expression and color. Cast in four movements, the first movement is a serious and dramatic voyage within the traditional sonata-form structure. In relief to the density of the first movement, the second movement is a much lighter scherzo akin to some of Mendelssohn’s “fairy music” movements. The third movement is the longest of the four chapters. Highly lyrical and emotional, it begins with an extended passage for solo piano. Several musicologists have remarked on the similarity of the melody of Kenny Rogers’ “She Believes in Me” to the main theme of this movement. (This statement may or may not be true.) The finale has the tremendous forward drive and drama that one might expect in the concluding chapter of such a impassioned work. At the midpoint, a Bach-like fugue appears with wonderful counterpoint and dialogue between the voices before a return to the Romantic thrust to the conclusion.
I hope you are able to join us and hear the sonata for yourself on Thursday, February 15 at 7pm at the RISD Museum Grand Gallery. Also on the program will be Beethoven’s charming sonata in E-flat, op. 12 no. 3 with Luke Fatora, violin and Jeff Louie, piano.
–Jesse Holstein
Associate Director / Senior Resident Musician
I recently discovered that the beloved game of skipping stones across water has a variety of other names in other countries – ducks and drakes (UK), dragonflies (Czech), throwing a sandwich (Finnish) and the Ukrainian name is zapuskaty zhabky which translates to “letting the frogs out”.
What has me thinking about skipping stones, you ask?
As musicians engaged in community residencies, we are constantly experimenting – tweaking traditional concert formats to engage new people, bringing a new game to a classroom of violin students – to build meaningful connections between people. And, that moment of trying something new in pursuit of connection, is a lot like the moment when you let go of the pebble to see how far it will bounce.
As anyone with stone-skipping prowess will tell you, much depends on finding the right pebbles. And we have been incredibly lucky with our plentiful supply! The Newport String Project is now in its fifth season – thanks to incredible community support, this year, myself and Emmy have been joined by violist Ashley Frith and cellist Jaime Feldman. Together we perform as the Newport String Quartet and curate educational programming that provides free violin, viola and cello lessons to almost forty students aging from Pre-K to fifth graders. There have been many, many “pebbles” along the way. And there have definitely been some “clunkers”– unruly frogs, you might say – but some of the more successful “pebbles” have led to signature events like the Paper Orchestra concerts (see highlights from our most recent one here) and the community barn dance series and many rich collaborations with local organizations.
Every so often, there’s the magical combination of pebble, technique and environmental conditions – and you realize that the pebbles are bouncing a lot further than you imagined, maybe in ways you hadn’t even noticed or realized. Like when our oldest students are recruiting their friends to come join the Newport String Project. Like when a younger sibling already knows a song because they’ve learnt it from an older brother or sister. Like when you notice a parent absorbed in watching their child’s lesson and marveling at the complexity of skills they’re learning. Like when an audience member finds you after a concert to ask what works by that composer they should listen to next. These moments are energizing, humbling and bring much needed detail to the sweeping Big Picture flow of this work.
-Ealain McMullin, Newport String Project Co-Director
Learn more about Newport String Project here!
Our good friend from the North, Carole Bestvater (CMW Violin Fellow 2009-2011), shares the latest news from Strong Harbour Strings along with an update on a visit from our own MusicWorks Network Fellow and CMW student alum, Andrew Oung. Carole is the Director & Founder of the program, located in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Wow, it’s hard to imagine that five years have passed since this program started! Here we are, in Strong Harbour Strings’ fifth season, with so much to celebrate. This year, there are 24 students in our main centre, all coming two times a week for group and individual lessons. We also started a satellite centre in a nearby neighbourhood across the harbour. There are 16 students who come twice a week during their lunch hour to learn the violin and viola. There are three new staff members who joined the team this season, so we’re having fun getting to know each other, teaching, and playing music together.
We recently played a concert of the Vivaldi Four Seasons in a downtown pub, selling out the place! People loved it! We’re planning on repeating the concert in a workshop for the SHS students, as well as in another family-friendly venue. It’s been a very exciting time for Strong Harbour Strings.
The most exciting aspect right now is that Andrew Oung, the MusicWorks Network Fellow, is currently in St. John’s for a six week internship. He’s working with a small group of 7th graders in developing the culture for a group inspired by CMW’s teen group, Phase II. He’s been leading discussions, prompting conversations, and laying down a foundation for a group like this to continue after his internship here has finished. It has been exciting to see this aspect of Strong Harbour Strings develop, and feels like the missing puzzle piece is finally in place. Now that we have students who are growing, developing critical thinking, and are completely blissed out that they get to keep on learning music and hanging out with each other, we’re finally ready to develop a Phase II-like program for them.
Sending love and hugs from the North Atlantic,
Andrew Oung also sent along an update on his visit:
For the past few weeks I have been working here with Strong Harbour Strings. It has been wonderful getting to know all of the students and staff. I work with them three times a week, each day taking on a different role. I have started a small discussion group with the program’s 7th graders, I teach violin lessons, I support teachers during orchestra time, and I help students learn music theory. Strong Harbour takes place at two locations, one of which is the Cornerstone Ministry Centre. I really love that there is an open space where students and parents gather while they wait for lessons. It provides an opportunity for them to naturally interact with each other, and helps the music theory mentors be visible and accessible.
Outside of the educational aspect of the program, I attended a performance by the staff, named the Strong Harbour Strings Collective. They performed Vivaldi’s Four Season at The Black Sheep Pub to a full audience. I loved seeing how much the audience enjoyed the performance and I overheard somebody proudly say, “where else in the world can you hear Vivaldi in a pub”. While I can think of another city very dear to me where that could be true, I still think there is a uniqueness to the music community here. I’ll be in St. John’s for a few more weeks and I look forward to learning more about Strong Harbour Strings and the musical community here.
We checked in with former CMW Fellow Annalisa Boerner (Viola Fellow 2012-2014), who has joined the staff of Music Haven in New Haven, CT as a full time Resident Musician and member of the Haven String Quartet. Here, Annalisa shares some news about the program’s new digs. 
On Friday, January 19th, Music Haven celebrated its tenth year of teaching and our move into a beautiful new space with a ribbon cutting ceremony. Our new offices are in a former factory space called Erector Square. Our suite was too small for a school, too big for a yoga studio, and just right for our organization to fit into and grow with.
Music Haven’s new location, where we rehearse, teach, and perform, is helping our program grow in ways big and small. The sense of community is palpable when our eighty students gather for group classes on Fridays, and as they filter in and out throughout the week. We love to see them doing homework and playing Uno in the lounge area as they wait for lessons. On the teaching side, I can keep a shelf of music, a jar of clothespins, and both a violin and a viola close at hand, and my students can have lessons in a calm environment that’s dedicated to music-making. We’ve hosted studio recitals with potlucks in our large performance space, and we look forward to debuting next year’s Chamber Series concerts in this area as well.
The program for the afternoon of the 19th included words from Mandi Jackson, Executive Director; Yaira Matyakubova, violinist and Senior Resident Musician; and Mayor Toni Harp (!) who cut the ribbon. The Music Lanterns, an ensemble of nine to twelve-year-old students, kicked off the program, and the Harmony In Action chamber orchestra concluded it with a conductorless performance of Lean on Me.
It is thanks to our many supporters of all varieties that we are able to sustain and grow our program in this way. Here’s to ten more years at Music Haven!
–Annalisa Boerner
Congratulations to Annalisa and the Music Haven staff and students!
“I find myself saying that it doesn’t matter what the music is, or at least that the content is a trivial concern compared to the importance of making a human connection between performer and listener.”
Heath Marlow, former CMW staffer and current faculty/staff at New England Conservatory, reflects on his work with CMW Fellows in creating and implementing a performance residency at Butler Hospital, a psychiatric facility on Providence’s East Side, in 2017:
At our first session together in Fall 2016, I asked the Fellows to come up with a new community (not the communities already served by Community MusicWorks) that could potentially benefit from interacting with a string quartet.
The group’s research led to the conclusion that it would be important to try out their ideas in an environment that had the capacity to support the quartet’s experimental activities. Butler Hospital’s Healing Arts Program was immediately receptive to hosting the quartet, and a series of three activities for distinct patient populations (adolescent, adult, geriatric) was soon decided upon.
”It was personally humbling to participate in the workshops. The response in each unit was so different – but equally powerful. It felt challenging to insert ourselves into such an intense environment – having no idea where each person was on their healing path.”
Read Heath’s full account and reflection in his blog piece, here.
This year, Heath meets regularly with the current quartet of Fellows (and other interested musician colleagues) to discuss aspects of building a career as a musician at the intersection of artistry and community using the best practices associated with growing a community-based organization.
For the past 20 years, Community MusicWorks has been invested in both people and place – our students, families, and professional musicians, and the community of Providence.
Last year was truly a celebratory season. Throughout our programs, we reflected on our growth and impact, and we took on important new initiatives. Some of last year’s most significant moments included the expansion of our Daily Orchestra Program to include a new daily ensemble for six-, seven-, and eight-year-olds; the We Shall Overcome Project; the graduation of our largest class of Phase II students and our tenth class of Fellows; the residency of world-renowned pianist Emanuel Ax; and over 30 inspiring free performances.
Beyond the specifics, we celebrated the culture of Community MusicWorks, which supports young people, professional musicians, guest artists, and our colleagues in CMW’s Fellowship Program, to continually grow their approach to music-making in our community.
“The always-evolving organism of CMW is innovative, curious, engaged, compassionate, empathetic, generous and far-reaching. I learned more than I imagined I would in the most supportive and nurturing environment. I can’t think of a better place to incubate and grow ideas and deepen my own experience and confidence. Getting to know, teach, and learn from the most wonderful studio of students, along with performing with an exceptional ensemble of colleagues has been incredibly motivating and continues to inform my work.”
– Josie Davis, violinist, CMW Fellow 2015-17
Using our 20th season as both inspiration and motivation – and recognizing all there is still to work on in our community and world – we are beginning our third decade looking even more deeply at our mission and how we put it into practice. Consistent with our Strategic Plan, we have mapped out several significant enhancements to our programs, included below.
These new initiatives range from further developing our music education practices with young people, to deepening the experiences of our concert audiences, to developing the MusicWorks Network, a new consortium of programs around the country that were founded on CMW’s model. I am pleased to share highlights of these new program elements, which of course will be in addition to our daily work with our 160 students and our over 30 free performances in our communities.
What we know has been a key to our growth and success – our ability to create new opportunities – has been the partnerships with supporters like you who share our belief that music can be a transformative experience for our communities.
As we launch into our third decade, your donation towards our ambitious 21st season will enable us to further develop, strengthen, and deepen our work.
As you know, Community MusicWorks is committed to offering our youth programs and performances free of charge – which means we must raise our full budget each year. Your generous gift will ensure that we can maintain our commitments to students, musicians, and audiences. Your partnership will allow us to work with young people and artists in a way that has a real impact on building positive goals and futures.
I appreciate your considering a generous gift this fall to make transformational experiences possible for young people and our communities.
Sincerely,
Sebastian Ruth
Founder & Artistic Director
Community MusicWorks
Community MusicWorks
21st Season Special Programs and Projects
Phase II for All and Joy in Practice
This year, during the first semester of All Play Day – a weekly two-hour session where CMW Phase I, II and III students gather for intense lessons and rehearsals – students will be invited to select classes based on their playing ability and interest. Classes will focus on improvisation and composition, theory and sight-reading, jazz, performance anxiety and mindfulness, learning how to practice, and experimental music. This enhanced offering provides our students with many access points into the study of music, and encourages them to explore their own interests and skills as musicians.
The second half of the year will be focused on ensembles, including all students exploring a piece in depth, building on the We Shall Overcome Project. In the We Shall Overcome Project, all of our students will learn an arrangement of a historically significant song as well as learning about its origins, later uses, and meaning. Starting in January, students will take part in weekly activities that explore the text, history, and power of this song, and will write their own verses based on their personal and musical experiences in their community or in the world at large.
Music Transforms
As part of our mission to explore, hear, and perform a broad range of voices through our concerts, our programming this year has been expanded to include a theme of presenting under-represented communities. Throughout the season, we will explore the works by female composers in a broad range of genres and instrumentation.
In addition to our MusicWorks Collective concerts, CMW’s mission to present visionary artists, such as Jonathan Biss, Emanuel Ax, and this season, world-renowned violinist Johnny Gandelsman, in performances and collaborations, offers two important opportunities for CMW. First, it allows CMW to share its mission and programs with a broader base of music aficionados. Second, it offers our students an opportunity to be inspired to strive for their musical and personal goals and to find their voice as unique citizens in our world.
Leading the Conversation
In August, CMW launched MusicWorks Network, the first of three annual institutes funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Network brings together representatives from nine organizations, staffed or led by former CMW Fellows and participants in our Institutes for Musicianship and Public Service. The overarching goals for the Network include: sharing social justice programming, goals, and methodology; incorporating college-going skills development among students across the network; and building connectivity between the sites to facilitate shared learning and creating pathways for CMW students and Fellowship Program graduates to contribute and gain employment in other sites.
Several important themes emerged at the institute that challenged CMW to grow our practice. Primary among them is that CMW has an opportunity to dig deeper into the questions of organizational practice as they relate to social justice broadly, and racial justice in particular. We are energized to define more clearly how all of CMW’s practices can reflect our social justice commitment and curriculum.
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