January 13 was a special day for Community MusicWorks, visiting the source of such inspirational writing as was found in Releasing the Imagination by Sebastian while still a student at Brown.

On Friday, the Providence String Quartet, Minna, and Heath visited an amazing program in Harlem and were rewarded with an energizing, affirming experience. Brotherhood/Sister Sol was started in 1995 by two Brown University grads, Jason
Warwin and Khary Lazarre-White. Our contact there was Tara Mack, another Brown grad involved in the project, operating out of a brownstone near the corner of 143rd and Amsterdam.

Bro/Sis serves two hundred Black and Latino kids after school, providing mentoring, leadership development, international study, academic
tutoring, internships, community service, job training, and youth organizing activities. Like CMW, they strive to empower youth to develop into creative thinkers and community leaders.

The highlight of our four hour visit was the teen writing circle that we sat in on for a couple hours, with the PSQ members supplying improvised music under gritty, powerful, funny, often challenging poetry shared by the Bro/Sis teen group. Here’s a scrap that I managed to jot down:

Look at all the Blacks in jail
Seems like America’s having a slavery clearance sale. -Emmanuel

"The music enhances the emotion and the strength of the poetry… It was great how you could give them two or three words about what the poem was about and they could make something up." -Marsha

"It was just hot. Some people the way they wanted their poem to sound, the music made it sound better. It tried to show what the emotion of the poem was." -James

-Heath Marlow, CMW staff

Visiting Bro/Sis was unusually inspiring. I met a very talented cellist named Chris who became my instant buddy. He performed for the first time in front of his buddies that day (with some accompaniment from the quartet). The smile on his face after the performance was infectious and kept me going all weekend! He kept asking me how far Providence was, and I started wishing, for the first time, that Providence was a suburb of New York!

-Sara Stalnaker, Providence Quartet

Yes, it’s true. Our fearless leader Sebastian Ruth has been selected by the Providence Monthly Magazine as one of the ten people in 2007 who you don’t yet know but are likely to change the face of Providence.

Not only that, he is the only one of "this year’s class of future local celebrities" who is a "master of both the violin and viola." But seriously, congratulations Sebastian on this recognition for your personal commitment to changing lives in Providence’s West End over these last ten years.

Click here to read the feature while it is online this month.

-Heath Marlow, CMW staff

Three Rhode Island violinmakers (each wonderful supporters of CMW individually) are currently working on a new project: they are collaboratively building a fine violin that they will donate to CMW when their work is completed in April.

Modeled on a 1742 Guarneri "del Jesu," the violin is being constructed from the finest Boznian maple and high altitude Austrian spruce.

More on this exciting project later, but here are three photos from a mid-December violin building session hosted by Andrew Ryan, pictured along with Tucker Densley and Karl Dennis. All photos donated by Krzystyna Harber.

-Heath Marlow, CMW staff

Plenty of events to keep us busy this month. After three more days of teaching lessons, CMW will hibernate  until 2007. We will return with renewed vigor–and hopefully more frequent postings–in early January. -Heath Marlow, CMW staff

The PSQ collaborated with four members of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in a performance of the first movement of the Mendelssohn Octet to lead off a December 15 event featuring Daniel Barenboim at Brown University.

Phase II members pose with Daniel Barenboim and Michael Steinberg of Brown University.

Boston’s Firebird Ensemble visited for a Friday workshop, bringing a team of musicians to perform Jon Deak’s "The Passion of Scrooge," a piece that included audience participation among a variety of most peculiar sonic effects.

The PSQ played Mozart with Minna and some wild under-the-sea creatures courtesy of Big Nazo at the Vartan Gregorian Elementary School.

A Phase II quartet performs at the December 9 Performance Party.

“I’m big and strong–what makes me so fit?
What is my secret?–you’re standing in it! Ha, ha, ha.
The nutrition I find is what you leave behind.
Never fear, nothing here goes to waste.”

“Round and round and round,
The world goes round,
Round and round and round I roll.”

-from Dung Beetle’s aria

Some images from The Bug Opera on Friday, November 17:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Gracer of Sunrise Land Shrimp and his edible bugs were a big hit during dinner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The lobby at the Columbus Theatre was packed at around 7:15 PM.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Families arriving early enjoyed a live bug exhibit (provided by the Roger Williams Park Zoo) and a live composer exhibit (provided by Geoff Hudson) upstairs at the Columbus Theatre.

-Heath Marlow, CMW staff

A terrific photo of the dress rehearsal of The Bug Opera, courtesy of our production manager, P. "Bugs" Linardos. Click here: Download bug_opera11.12.06.pdf
to read the Providence Journal’s preview of The Bug Opera.

Earlier this month, we invited the Miro String Quartet to town for a two-day visit…

Warming up at the West End Community Center

Performing for a full house in the Homew[ork Center]

Mendelssohn Octet at the John Carter Brown Library

Lunch at the (very full) CMW office

After years of being on the Community MusicWorks
Advisory Council, we were finally able to actively participate in some CMW
activities in Providence in early November. We were especially looking forward
to this, as many in the CMW family are old friends, fellow alumni from the
Oberlin Conservatory and numerous summer festivals. It was a reunion of sorts. When
we got down to work with them, we were all so impressed with what they had accomplished
in such a short time. With Korean meals and Mendelssohn Octets interspersed
throughout our residency, we witnessed firsthand the magical effect that music
can have on a community and we are happy to have been able to share even a
small part of those moments. A great time was had by all!

-Daniel Ching, Miro String Quartet

A few photos from the October files, as we zoom into November…


Chloe’s beginning viola students demonstrating new skills at their first Performance Party (Oct. 21).


Wolfgang Amadeus Schmutzenberry (a spoof on W. A. Mozart) teaches students how to be a very mediocre composer at the first Musical Workshop (Oct. 27), featuring a return visit by guitarist and composer Rami Vamos & Friends.

-Heath Marlow, CMW staff

No sooner had our Bugs arrived at Steeple Street, they
were attacked by the BIG NAZ0 Providence River Trolls, who started
singing "There ain’t no bugs on me.” I feared it would get
nasty. Instead, they all started dancing together, a scene I’ll never
forget.

We had ambitious plans to have our Bugs present two
segments of the Bug Opera but a snafu got in our way. When the Narragansett
technical crew tried to play our CD, it sounded like the CD was
skipping. Thereupon I walked to my home, to try downloading the excerpt
from the Bug Opera website. That didn’t work. Hoping that the
disc might not skip in another CD player, I grabbed my own
small portable one. It turned out that the technicians had three
Discmans connected to their stereo system, but it failed to play the CD
regardless. Another ten minutes or so passed as they were asking somebody else
to come help. While we were waiting for help, I gently insisted that they
should try my CD player. To our great surprise, it worked fine. But
at that point a jazz band right behind us started playing. A minute later
we were told that our time was up.

Regardless, the Bugs made the most out of the
circumstances. They distributed lots of flyers from Steeple Street to the
Verrazzano monument, always attracting ample attention.

We are grateful to the Bugs Cameron,
Jamie and Will. Many thanks for their
help with passing out flyers to the boys’ friend Nora, Cameron’s parents Nancy
and Bob and our star Bug Opera volunteer Stephanie. Bob and Nancy also did a
great job helping the boys put on the complex costumes – to my huge
relief, because I felt quite helpless on that matter.

–Petros
Linardos, Bug Opera Production Manager