Lauren Latessa, Cello Fellow, grew up in Cincinnati,
Ohio. Lauren earned a Masters degree in cello performance from Northwestern
University, where she studied with Hans Jensen. She received her Bachelor of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory of Music under the
guidance of David Hardy.

While at Peabody, Lauren was the Student Associate
Director of Creative Access, the
largest student run musical outreach organization in the United States. As a leader in this organization, she has
performed in many nontraditional settings, including hospices, nursing homes
and afterschool programs. In addition to
her musical pursuits, Lauren holds a BA honors diploma in the History of Art,
where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with distinction from the Humanities Center
of the Johns Hopkins University. She is
very interested in the crossover between classical music and visual art and
enjoys any opportunity where she can combine her musical and visual art
passions.

Lauren says: “I first heard about CMW’s Fellowship Program
when I was a junior at Peabody. From
that first encounter, it sounded like a perfect position for me! I’ve always loved teaching and playing
chamber music and I have always believed that there was a strong connection
between music and social justice. I am
thrilled to be at CMW playing chamber music, teaching, and deepening my understanding
about the connection between music and social justice.”

Please join us in warmly welcoming Lauren to CMW and the Fellowship Program!

-Minna Choi, Fellowship Program Director

Part Three of an ongoing series of reflections by resident violinist Chase Spruill.

I hadn’t been having a whole lot of success setting up the new household during my first couple of weeks. After being met with various disasters, I was pretty set with the notion that at least having cable installed in one’s home should be a fairly simple process. However, after having my heart and expectations broken multiple times, I was losing hope for the thought that any process involving setting up your house could be a simple one. A few back-and-forth calls to the cable company finally yielded a technician sent to my house for the installation. The rest of the CMW staff was going to be gathering at a mixer after touring this year’s new teaching facility, Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts, but, admittedly, a few weeks without television had sent me into nervous twitches and a strange feeling of being disconnected from the rest of the world, so I was happy to wait during my window of 5 pm to 7 pm for the technician to show.
   
As 7:30 pm approached and there were no technicians in sight, I was imagining all the fun my coworkers must be having at the party, sharing stories, reading chamber music… The sky was getting dark, the minutes were rolling by, impending rehearsal dates for CMW were looming on the calendar, and I still had a lot of music to learn, so I pulled out my violin and decided to start getting some serious work done.

Fifteen minutes hadn’t gone by before I got a knock on the door and the Cable Company had showed up. I was face-to-face with a pleasant man named James who immediately apologized for being so behind on the schedule. After shaking hands and showing him inside, he took note of the violin laying on the couch.

“You a musician?” he asked.
“On my better days, yeah.” 

I’m always slightly confused when somebody sees a violin in my house next to a music stand and asks me whether or not I’m a musician. Perhaps they assume I’m about to creating some sort of wall installation? Or perhaps I’m a less talented Andy Warhol?

“You any good?”
“I try to be. I work at it every day.” A stock answer, but a true answer.
“Well, don’t let me stop you,” he said, setting down his tools and unpacking all his materials. “I love music. It won’t bother me one bit.”

I’m uncomfortable practicing around people I don’t know. It’s possible that I labor under the misconception that the general public believes that when a musician practices, they’ll be able to set up lawn chairs outside and enjoy a free concert. If they ever actually did that, I’m sure they’d be disappointed by the constant repetition and the squealing and the screeching as I try to learn Beethoven. So there’s always an initial embarrassment that I feel about doing the serious work I need to do in front of people who’ve never seen or heard a classical musician practice before.

About fifteen to twenty minutes passed before I started hearing drilling and hammering. It was a relatively comforting distraction where I actually felt free to sound bad (which is easy to do when you’re practicing, and most of what one might expect in the first few days of learning a piece). But as I tried to retain note patterns under my fingers, my brain kept switching back and forth to the cable installation in-progress and what problem I was destined to run into next. Finally, I set the violin back in its case and made my way into the other room to find James who was crouched into the corner of a wall.
   
He got up from his knees and walked me over to the window. “You see that cord hovering from the telephone pole, past the street light and over the roof? You see how it’s kind of hanging next to the wall of that house over there? Well, that’s not supposed to be like that. That means somebody cut it. The wire connects through the wall and into this outlet you see here. If there’s a TV that’s going to be in a different room, what I can do is connect a splitter, find a spot in the wall where I can drill through to the other room, feed it through, and connect it to the cable box and the modem.”

“So we don’t have to bracket the cable cord along the baseboards?” I asked, recalling past experiences, realizing that I probably didn’t really understand why all of that was actually being done. “You can do it like that. But this way will be easier."
   
James went through a couple more technical things with me, and I felt much better. I was finally having the experience of having something go about as right as it could possibly go, and I was understanding why things were happening the way they were.

He was finishing work up in the living by connecting our internet when I decided to start practicing again. A couple minutes later, he stopped me in between notes and asked, "So, do you understand what you’re seeing right there?"
  
“What, on the music?”
“Yeah.”
“Well… In a way, I guess I do.”
“So, if you understand it, why do you practice?”
   
That’s a question I ask myself every now and again. “Well, because this is a new piece for me that I have to learn. I can understand the notes on the page and what they are, but I don’t know how to connect the material just yet… When I practice, I try to find a way to make the notes that are on the page work for me in a technical way so that I don’t run into a section of music that my hands don’t know… I guess that’s what my practicing really is—it’s me trying to get coordinated.”
   
“So why do you have to practice these notes before you have to play them if you can already read them?”

Another excellent question. “Well, this piece right here is actually one violin part in a piece written for four instruments. So, when I practice these notes, I do it before I get together with the other people to rehearse so we can talk about a bunch of other things, like, what we think of the piece, interpretation, pacing… That way, technique doesn’t keep us from talking about the stuff that represents what the composer is trying to say with the music they’ve written.”

“I love classical music, man… That stuff really gets to me. Sometimes it just takes me to, like, this other place in my brain. It’s such a great way to relax after work and life and kids… You gonna be playing this anytime soon?”

Almost in a flurry, images, words and voices from my first week at CMW began flooding through my head. Suddenly, the staff meetings and the sit-downs with the planning teams and the quick conversations in the storefront office all began to pull themselves together in a meaningful way. I was free from the anxiety of information overload, and I became an agent for my new workplace:

    …You know, there’s this cool project we're undertaking this season…
    …It’s possible you’ll find us in a rehabbed house converted into a temporary concert venue…
    …It’s about bringing music to the community as a force for good…

I could talk about the mission of CMW in a way that truly helped me understand the path I’m walking right now. I didn’t necessarily need to find a way to become a member of the community. I already was. And this was the conscious start of my own exploration into the same philosophy that brews in this strangely magical vortex on Westminster Street, and the journey of how to go deeper, positively affecting the community through music while having the community positive
ly affect you. 
   
I’m unbelievably happy to be working with this group of dedicated, talented people, and I’m eager, through my time here working with them, to see what product is born come this time next summer. I hope you’ll take that journey with me, and offer me your voice, your ears, and your heart.

More photos by Jori in CMW's Flickr account.

Part Two of an ongoing series of reflections by resident violinist Chase Spruill.

“The first thing you should know is that, at the end of this week, if you feel like your head is going to explode and you’re going to fall into a seizure because of all the information we’re about to throw at you, that’s totally okay.” That came from CMW's founder Sebastian Ruth who was sitting across from me at a long conference table on the third floor of the office space on Westminster Street that CMW rents.

I had watched videos and interviews and read articles about Sebastian and company long before I showed up, and so it was interesting to be sitting with members of the staff face-to-face. They’re just as fashionable and just as warm as they come off on interview footage in the news or on YouTube. “I told Chloe to tell you ‘If, at the end of the week, Chase feels massively disoriented and like his head is going to explode, let him know that that’s okay.’” Chloe Kline, CMW's Education Director, was sitting on the other side of the table, smiling and nodding along in agreement. “That said—” she laid out a massive red binder in front of me full of various reading materials and detailed contracts and compendiums,”—welcome to Community MusicWorks.”
   
As it turns out, my first week learning about CMW was going to be about way more than small technical things, like learning when schedules come out and how to check email. It was going to be about ingesting the various concepts that have been growing and living inside of the organization since its inception. Running alongside that moving vehicle can feel daunting enough, but then, trying to jump on board when other new CMW projects are coming to the fore can feel like an equally trying task.

After signing my name on the dotted line, I committed to being a part of the team and to bring energy and creativity to my job. But when you learn that so much of that job ends up depending on knowing things about the community, what do you bring to the table when you don’t feel like you’re an actual part of the community yet and have no idea how to achieve that? And when it happens, do you know it? Can you feel it? Does someone send you an official letter in the mail letting you know that you’ve achieved community status? (to be continued…)

Part One of an ongoing series of reflections by resident violinist Chase Spruill.

When you take a new job, there are certain things as a responsible new member of the team that you want taped on your chest when the Taxi drops you off on the company doorstep. For one, know your acronyms. Every company has their own lingo and the best way to feel like you can contribute to the information being hurled around in conversations and meetings is to know what in the world they’re talking about. Still, though, you won’t know everything, and it’s best not to panic.  Secondly, accept the fact that you’ll probably mess up…a lot. You’ll want to minimize the damage you do to other people’s work due to being ignorant of the way their world works, but nonetheless, you don’t know anything until you know it. And third, don’t feel bad if you don’t make friends. You can’t force it. People who’ve been working together for a long time already have a relationship with one another, and it’s got nothing to do with you, but eventually, hopefully, it will…

These are some of the thoughts that spun through my head between my three connecting flights in the middle of August 2012 en route to Providence, Rhode Island from Sacramento, California. No one knows you and you don’t know them. And if that isn’t anxiety enough, your family is going to be joining you in this adventure in three short weeks, and you still don’t officially have a place to stay. When I first accepted this job, Heath Marlow—CMW's Managing Director who first contacted me about potentially applying—had urged me to be in contact with members of the community. I was advised to ask about housing, ask about neighborhoods, places to eat, grocery stores, day care, breathing, and on, and on, and on… All really good stuff, except no one in Providence knew me, and I didn’t know them. I wasn’t a member of the community. How could I impose? That wasn’t my thing. Perhaps, when they get to know me, if they like me, maybe I could have those conversations. But only once I know I’ve become a member of the community. But how does one do that? What a hefty task to undertake, and lo and behold, it’s in your job description. And how do you know when it actually happens? Is it something at which you can actually succeed?
   
Between the takeoff of my plane at Sacramento International Airport at 7 am on August 10, and the time I actually landed in Providence on August 11 at 2 am the next day, a series of disasters had struck. A storm came in and cancelled a few of my connecting flights. I was rerouted to Washington D.C., only to have another flight cancelled. The newly rescheduled flight had been oversold and seats were all messed up, and to add insult to injury, they decided it would be a good idea to fly me straight into a lightning storm. All the things you love to go through when you’re like me and have slight hesitations about travelling by air. And through all of this, I had been wondering if this were some kind of terrible omen about my weeks to come and my eventual year at this new job.
   
Surely enough, over the next few days, it was one disaster after another. The first place I looked at renting became a fiasco of comedic proportions. The second place I found and ended up renting wasn’t ready to be lived in and…well, as it would turn out, wouldn’t be ready for quite some time. I had received my first parking ticket because I didn’t realize there was no such thing as overnight parking in my new neighborhood. And half the furniture I bought ended up not being able to fit through my front door or any other door in the house.
   
If this was my first week in a new place, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what my first week at work was going to be like…

After two transformational years as a Fellow at CMW, I moved to Boston in 2010 to participate in the Sistema Fellows Program at the New England Conservatory. During that inspiring year, I learned about the many aspects of how to create and manage an El Sistema-inspired program in the US. In the spring of 2011, I spent five weeks in Venezuela traveling to different parts of the country, observing and teaching in the music programs there. I returned to the U.S. inspired to share the experience of El Sistema with families in Providence.

Thanks to support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, I was able to return to CMW last season to spend time preparing to launch the new program that I had been dreaming about creating. I had the opportunity to put into practice some specific ideas for music education that I gathered in Venezuela with a class of CMW beginners. I also enjoyed my work with CMW's Green Magic Orchestra and Phase II.

On September 10, CMW will launch a daily string orchestra program inspired by El Sistema. We are excited to be working with our partner in the neighborhood, the John Hope Settlement House. In combination with JHSH's Out of School Time Program, students in the orchestra will be provided with private lessons, snacks, homework help, mentors from Brown University, arts and crafts activities, and, of course, daily orchestra rehearsals. We’ll be starting out with a group of 25 first graders, including children from CMW's waiting list, children from JHSH, and children who we are recruiting to join the program.

Last week, violinist Lisa Barksdale and I had a chance to meet some of the families who will be entering the program at an information session hosted by JHSH. At the session, I shared with families this short video of people talking about El Sistema. The video features music performed by youth orchestras in Venezuela.

Do you know someone who is the parent of an eligible first grader? We are looking specifically for children who have the most to gain from this special opportunity to participate in a free daily after-school program. Please invite them to contact me via the CMW office.

-Adrienne Taylor, Program Director

Photos by Don Tarallo. Check out Providence Pudding Pops here.

As part of CMW's ArtPlace award, monthly updates will be posted on ArtPlace's website.

Congratulations to Rachel Panitch, the Rhode Island Fiddle Project, and Pawtucket's Woodlawn Community Development Corporation which recently received a $5,000 grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts to support the RI Fiddle Project, now beginning its fourth year.

More photos by Jori in CMW's Flickr account.