Welcome back! It's that time of year again, poised for the start of the school year. At CMW, the Providence Quartet and Fellows who scattered for the summer to music festivals from Maine to Utah will soon be back in town for planning meetings, students are sharing summer highlights, and the Board (including eight new members) has held a productive day-long retreat to outline its priorities for the year and brainstorm strategies for meeting the goals of our 12th season.

                    Liz Hollander

The Board of Directors has a policy that after a member has served for three consecutive two-year terms s/he must retire from the Board for at least one year. So I retired in June after my six years, and am delighted that Elizabeth Hollander is succeeding me as President. Liz has invaluable experience – most recently for the past twenty years as Executive Director of Campus Compact, a national organization that promotes public service in colleges. Since retiring from that position she has become a Senior Fellow at the Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. She will be supported by a strong executive committee of other officers and members at large.

Liz has been a passionate and articulate supporter of CMW since she joined the Board in 2005 and attended her first Performance Party, where, as she likes to say, she really "got it." (There is nothing like a Performance Party to give rich insight into the many dimensions of CMW – Community, Music, and the working relations of students and staff, along with memorable moments of pride and joy, and the delights of a shared potluck culmination! If you haven't yet made it to a Performance Party, or a Musical Workshop, do plan to make it a priority to come and bring a friend or two with you.)

It is exciting to see such a mutually strong match between CMW and Liz Hollander and the Board. Fasten your seat belts as we prepare to witness the continued growth of this transformational and innovative organization that so enriches our Providence greater community and is now inspiring people in other places (e.g. New Haven and Cincinnati) to spread its rewards by adapting it to other cities in this country.

-Karen Romer, CMW Honorary Board

Anticipating the start of CMW's 12th season, so many special events to be excited about! How about just a few teasers from the fall semester?

October 2 & 3:

October 15 & 16:

October 30:

November 23:

For footage of CMW Fellow Rachel Panitch performing "Gretel Dreaming" with the Providence Mandolin Orchestra on tour this summer in The Netherlands, click here.

CMW's board of directors retreated to a conference room at Providence's Save the Bay Center to prepare for the upcoming 12th (!) season. As one board member noted, the "power of Community MusicWorks is in the continuity…"

Providing a synopsis of the first eleven years of CMW, Sebastian spoke about graduating from Brown University in 1997 with the vision of Community MusicWorks as an "experiment in educational ideas." He pondered the question, "how would we do music education differently to maximize the experience of transformation?" One key to CMW's approach is that we practice "inreach" (as opposed to outreach) and therefore the transformation in our neighborhood can be shared by children, families, and also importantly, the musicians themselves.

It's going to be a great 12th season. Details to be announced soon…
-Heath Marlow, CMW staff

Phase II students Josh and Luis (pictured below with board president Liz Hollander) join board veteran Kirby as CMW's student representatives.

A few photos from 2003 and earlier days of Community MusicWorks. Who do you recognize?

You don’t have to live in Providence to see and hear what’s happening at the other members of the Providence Youth Arts Collaborative (PYAC). Here’s a sampling of multimedia, all just a few mouse clicks away…

1. Videos and podcasts from Everett Dance Theatre here.

2. Providence Black Repertory Company blog here.

3. Providence CityArts for Youth “Virtual Gallery” here.

4. New Urban Arts media page here.

5. Sounds and video from AS220 here.

A recent article by Boston Globe music critic (and CMW friend) Jeremy Eichler:

“I’ve never felt so paralyzed standing before my CD collection as the
day I brought my newborn son home from the hospital and decided to play
him his very first music. So much was at stake. Should it be modern or
Baroque? Orchestral or opera? Would Mozart make him smarter? Would
Schoenberg instill in him revolutionary tendencies? Would Wagner make
him loathe his Jewish roots?

I settled on Bach’s “Art of Fugue” in an arrangement for string
quartet. Why not begin at the summit, and what’s more, I imagined, all
that searching counterpoint would be like honey for the infant brain.
He responded with aplomb, conveying his wise, wordless mastery of the
material by slipping into an eyes-closed, meditative state. OK, he fell
asleep.”

Continue reading here.

Kirby sent in this photo taken at a special event at Mayor Cicilline’s home on Monday evening. CMW’s Phase III ensemble (including Luis and Josh) performed for the Mayor and his guests, including incoming Providence Public Schools superintendent Tom Brady (profiled in the Providence Journal).

Unless you’ve combed this blog’s archives, this updated map of the Community MusicWorks neighborhood will be new to you. Click on our education and performance venues, our friends, and some of our favorite eateries.

Community MusicWorks venues

Click here to read Daniel Wakin's NY Times profile of The Academy, The Juilliard School and Carnegie Hall's recently created fellowship program which "serves post-graduate musicians embarking on their careers by helping to
bridge the gap between their academic and professional lives."

"The
two-year fellowship… is designed to develop the skills and values leading to careers that
combine musical excellence with education and community outreach." Sound familiar?

The Academy's website is here.