Over the winter break I had the opportunity to join a string orchestra led by former CMW Resident Musician Jessie Montgomery in a concert featuring Jessie’s own compositions at New York City’s historic Trinity Wall Street. It was an exciting way to bring 2015 to a close, and it was a great chance to spend time with Jessie and celebrate her work!

–Adrienne Taylor, Resident Musician and Director, Daily Orchestra Program

Watch the full concert here.

This month in our Not Far from the Tree Series, former  CMW “Cello Fellow” Lauren Latessa checks in with a report on her moving and important work with the elderly in Maryland:

Hello dear CMW friends and Happy 2016!

 Last February I took a position as the Musician-in-Residence for a retirement community in Rockville, MD.  It was a brand new position, and I’ve spent the past year creating a music program for the elderly based on many of the same principles on which CMW is built.  Here I run daily group classes and work individually with residents.  Additionally I run and perform on a chamber music series that has concerts on campus once a month.

Thanks to a Tarisio Trust Young Artist Grant, I was recently lucky enough to have Emmy Holmes Hicks and Ealain McMullin, now heading the Newport String Project, along with violist Isabella Mensz here for a week-long Chamber Music Festival featuring the music of Mozart and Dvorak. Here are some highlights from our week together.

Day 1:

Open Rehearsal – Residents were able to observe the quartet as they rehearsed and learn a little more about the musical process.

Q&A with the Quartet – During this question and answer session we had a fantastic discussion about the role of musicians in society and the importance of teaching kids to pass on musical traditions. Emmy and Ealain shared insight about their work with the Newport String Project in Newport, RI.

Recital: Music from the Ring House Songbook – This event was particularly special because it featured music that was chosen by Ring House residents. Twice a month, I lead a sing-along with residents at Ring and during this time we’ve been putting together a Ring House Songbook. All of the music featured in this recital came from the Songbook and included some of the Ring residents’ best-loved ballads. Many of the melodies were new to our festival musicians, and they learned so much about them from residents.

Day 2:

Open Rehearsal

Lecture/demonstration on Dvorak’s American Quartet – We explored Dvorak’s life and experiences and played excerpts from the quartet to highlight how he translated experiences and emotions into his music.

Master Class – This was a particularly thrilling event for residents. During the class, two young cellists from a local high school performed and received feedback from our festival artists. The evening had a very welcoming and encouraging feel! After each student played, residents noticed their improvement and clapped and cheered. This was an inspiring day for all. In particular, it allowed residents to see more of what it takes to gain expertise with an instrument and how the right guidance can make all the difference.

Day 3:

Exploring Jewish Music – Emmy, Ealain and Isa joined our weekly Exploring Jewish Music class as observers and learners. They were all moved by how passionately the residents spoke about music that is close to their hearts. For this special class we discussed the question, “What is Jewish Music?” and focused on four examples: Shema, Kol Nidre, Bei Mir Bistu Shein, and Jerusalem of Gold.

Recital- This was the capstone event of the week! The quartet performed the music of Dvorak and Mozart for 125 residents, friends and family. It was a captivating evening.

Day 4:

Cohen-Rosen House Recital – Cohen-Rosen House provides the highest level of memory care on the campus, serving older adults with advanced cognitive needs. Because of this, I was not sure what to expect from the quartet’s visit to the residence. Part of me was preparing for a half-hour session where we would just play, but not actually interact much with residents.

But, this couldn’t have been farther from what happened. This performance turned out to be the most powerful thing that happened all week. It was a stirring moment when residents used their instruments (drums, egg shakers, tambourines) to connect thoughtfully with us. Some residents cannot converse easily, but they were nonetheless communicating and helping us to create something significant as we performed the first movement of Dvorak’s American Quartet. It’s hard to describe the impact of that moment, but all of us—quartet members, residents and staff members—could feel it. Together we produced an experience more inspiring than any of us could of have done individually.

Part of what excited me most about this particular performance was that it demonstrated how classical music might have a stronger presence in memory-care facilities. There is much well supported research on the benefits of performing recognizable popular and folk music for this population.  We saw first-hand the potential of using classical music to engage residents in the creative process, even those living with advanced stages of dementia.

Responses from residents:

“When I heard the string quartet my first reaction was that these musicians truly love and enjoy what they are playing. This Chamber Music Festival introduced me and us all at Ring House to the magic and beauty of chamber music.”

From members of the Chamber Music Festival Committee: “You know, most of us just sit around feeling like we are no longer needed. But this project has helped me to see that there are beautiful things to do in the world.”

From a community member: “This is all so wonderful. They are playing [music] with great sensitivity and beauty. What a distinguished group—and social service-minded to boot! CESLC may be unique in the USA and even the world in being able to offer something like this to residents.” 

Personal reflections: I realize the CMW community already knows this, but one of the wonderful things about chamber music is that it challenges both listeners and musicians to continue to grow. A one-time experience of a piece of chamber music may be exciting, but its real power comes from spending time with it and exploring its complexity and depth. At CMW, I saw how chamber music can foster a vibrant community and I am beyond excited to begin to see the same kinds of effects here!

The societal view of our elderly is changing rapidly as physicians and healthcare provides begin to recognize the importance of quality of life.  I believe that programming like our Chamber Music Festival is crucially important in establishing the type of living environment that we all want for our elders and for ourselves.  Moving forward, I am excited to explore this new paradigm!

Sending love from Maryland and missing you all!  Have a happy and healthy 2016!

–Lauren Latessa, CMW Fellow 2012-2014

Read more about Lauren and other Fellowship Program alums here.
Learn more about the Fellowship Program here.
Images are from Lauren Latessa and the Charles E. Smith Life Communities

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Community MusicWorks’ mission is to create a cohesive urban community through music education and performance that transforms the lives of children, families, and musicians. But how have we made these transformations happen? How can we develop an audience, connect with a teenager, change a city? How can professional musicians be transformed alongside their students?

By listening…

Fridays at the Daily Orchestra Program: the best of times, the worst of times. The students are tired, hungry, and hyped. If you wonder what you were like when you were seven, come over on Friday and see for yourself.

The decibel level at Federal Hill House can be rock-concert loud, but the energy is positive. Here it is the end of the week, and Miss Adrienne and Miss Lisa are asking twenty five kids to line up! Not only line up, but then sit in a circle quietly, in name-tag-identified places, and wait for the class to begin.

How do they do it?

My answer is this: not only are Adrienne and Lisa talented teachers,  but  these kids already know the power of music – that its alluring, it’s an achievement, and it’s fun. Fridays are turned over to the latter,  and it succeeds more often than it fails.

What happens on Fridays? Who wants to play rhythm machine? Who wants to go first? 25 hands are up. Who wants to end it? 25 hands. Which instrument section is calm enough to deserve retrieving their instruments?

“Ok cellos, you can get your instruments. “

“Not so fast, violins!”

I have the privilege of being part of the Daily Orchestra Program on occasional Fridays. I started by simply bringing in instruments I have managed to scavenge and hold on to for years: African drums, keyboards, theramin, penny whistle, shaker eggs, harmonica, clarinet , kazoo, bongos. I try to introduce these instruments as credible music makers, and we talk a little each time about rhythm, melody, or harmony. Where does sound come from? How did people first make sound? Does silence exist? What if you only had yourself to make music? What if you have a friend to make music?

A major step forward last this year was their willingness to “face the music”…..sit in small groups – trios or quartets – look each other in the eye, and take responsibility for contributing music they made and listening to each other.

Of course, rules are important to any group of 25 or so. The “Constitution” in this case includes simple acts of kindness: never criticize a friend, no such thing as a mistake, and more. Another is the growing respect they have toward music as a language of its own, that contains all the tensions and resolutions, that are part of all of their lives. 

What keeps me coming back? A constant is the boundless energy these kids devote to finding out who they are,  where they end, and where the world starts. Gradually, concepts of music and technique on their instruments sink in.

Will they be great musicians someday?  Who knows. I hope some will. But I do know that they will become young adults with more than average openness to the sounds of their neighborhood, the music around them,  and maybe even to the voices and feelings of their families and friends.

Sounds like a good first step in being part of a bigger community.

–Mark Hinkley
Community MusicWorks Board Member 

–Photos of Mark with Daily Orchestra Program students by Lisa Barksdale 

CMW musician Chase Spruill and RISD Museum Contemporary Art Curator Dominic Molon during tonight’s gallery talk at RISD, standing under the “spider web” in the solo show by Martin Boyce. The excitement builds for Saturday evening’s “Melody Unchained” musical event!

More details here:  http://risdmuseum.org/events/1042_2015_12_12_performance_melody_unchained

Last week students in the Daily Orchestra Program gave their first performance of the season at Federal Hill House before an audience of parents and friends. The program consisted of pieces played by the whole orchestra as well as two solos and a violin duet.

As I listened to the orchestra play Soon Hee Newbold’s Hiawatha I thought about how our conductorless orchestra of mostly 9 and 10-year-olds has grown over time and is now able to play in four parts, each section listening intently to the others in order to play together.  Maybe even more astonishing than their ability to play their own notes and rhythms together as a cohesive ensemble is the way students have grown to see themselves as essential parts of a working team.

When I have a moment to stand off to the side during a rehearsal and observe, I see students teaching each other, nominating each other to lead activities and congratulating each other on their achievements. Not only are students playing together as an orchestra, they are working together as a community.

–Adrienne Taylor (Daily Orchestra Program Director/Resident Musician)

Photos by Stephanie Ewens – Click here to see more of Stephanie’s fantastic photos of the Daily Orchestra Program concert 

When RISD curator Dominic Molon and CMW Resident Musician Chase Spruill first met to talk about a potential musical collaboration that could temporarily live inside the contemporary exhibit “When Now is Night” by Martin Boyce, there were striking and immediate similarities of approach and aesthetic.  Visually, Boyce has spent a career not only reimagining and recreating natural forms that surround our everyday life, but has also been inspired by the work of other artists such as Saul Bass, who so effectively captured the spirit of anxiety and fear in a big city, and the sense of being lost in the “cage” of the grid for the opening title sequence of the film North by Northwest.

As the movie industry and the recording industry began to take prominence in the early-to-mid 20th century, a distinct musical language began to emerge alongside increasingly more evocative visual mediums.  But the practices and inspirations of the composers and musicians who’ve produced and created the language of today’s music in film, music in television, and even what we hear on the radio, might be connected to a single event which took place in 16th century Europe.

Join us for a series of intimate and intensive special events that explore the work of Martin Boyce which culminates into a parallel concert experience designed to trace the roots, aesthetics and rise of popular music with an experimental program comprising over 300 years of music history.

Program:

John Bull: Variations on “Walsingham” for solo harpsichord

Arnold Schoenberg: String Quartet no.2

Alex North: Unchained Melody

Michael Nyman: String Quartet no.1 and music from “Drowning by Numbers”

–Chase Spruill (Resident Musician)

All events take place at the RISD Museum

Thursday, December 10 at 5:00pm 
Gallery talk with Dominic Molon, RISD curator and Chase Spruill
Free with museum admission

Mark your calendars for December 12 and 13!  We are all looking forward to Melody Unchained, an upcoming performance featuring CMW Players Sebastian Ruth, Chase Spruill, Kate Outterbridge and Adrienne Taylor, along with special guests, members of CMW’s Phase 3 chamber ensemble, and several CMW alumni.

Martin Boyce, When Now Is Night, 2002. Photo: Photographic Services. Courtesy of the Artist and The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd, Glasgow; Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich; Johnen Galerie, Berlin and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

The ensembles will be performing as part of the RISD Museum exhibit “When Now is Night.”  In this exhibit visual artist Martin Boyce is reimagining and reinterpreting natural forms.  One of Boyce’s inspirations for creating this kind of work is music made popular in the early-to-mid 19th century which gave way to the language of hard-hitting post-minimalist pop music that we know so well today.  But where does the practice of today’s popular music have its roots?  CMW presents an intensive, parallel musical exploration for one night only inside of this magnificent contemporary exhibit, spanning over 300 years of related musical history, and offering a bridge into the world and structure of today’s popular music.  Trust us, Melody Unchained will be an event not to be missed!

The program will include the following:
John Bull: Variations on “Walsingham” for solo harpsichord
Arnold Schoenberg: excerpts from String Quartet no.2
Alex North:  Unchained Melody
Michael Nyman:  String Quartet no.1 and music from “Drowning by Numbers”

To learn more and register for the event (seating is limited!) click the link below:

http://risdmuseum.org/events/1042_2015_12_12_performance_melody_unchained
 
–Chase Spruill (Resident Musician)

I have always been inspired by the connection between dance and music.  Growing up my first exposure to live music was seeing Atlanta Ballet productions of the great hits such as Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.  I was transfixed by the dancing and the talented musicians in the pit orchestra (including my then-violin teacher).  Still today ballet music is some of my favorite music of all time, and though I’m not a dancer myself I have a great appreciation for the many connections and interactions between our two professions.

As you can imagine I was very excited for Community MusicWorks students to witness and learn more about this connection up close and personal this past Tuesday evening.  Students and teachers braved the rainy evening and gathered in the lobby of the Holy Ghost School for a workshop with the dancers of Festival Ballet Providence.  They presented three dances from their upcoming performance  “Up Close On Hope”  (Nov. 13th-22nd), accompanied by CMW Resident Musician Adrienne Taylor and CMW Fellow Hannah Ross.  Our students made very keen observations about the dances, picking up emotions from the gestures and asking poignant questions about the choreographing process and the life of a dancer.

Then the real fun began!  Dividing into two groups, half of our students learned an 8-beat dance, while the other half learned to play an 8-beat melody on their instruments.  The workshop culminated in a performance of the music with the dancers, during which a relentlessly quickening tempo eventually dissolved into joyous laughter from everyone!

Throughout the evening I was thrilled to see so many students smiling, engaged, and seeing their musicianship in a whole new light.  Many thanks to Festival Ballet for this valuable experience!

–Lisa Barksdale, Resident Musician

Photos by Stephanie Ewens – Click here to see more!

Watch a short clip from the grand finale of our workshop here:

Hello from St. John’s!!

Well, I must say.

What a year it has been!

Many of you already are familiar with my exclamation marks and bubbling voice, but some of you reading this blog post may not be.  It constantly blows my mind that time continues to move forward, even though it feels like I lived in Providence just yesterday. Since participating in the Fellowship program from ’09-’11, CMW and the souls that make it so special have never been too far from my thoughts.

For the past two seasons, I have been piloting a program called the Suncor Energy Strings Program through the Newfoundland Symphony Youth Orchestra.  It was an interesting juxtaposition between the El Sistema and Community MusicWorks models.  Last spring, the scheduled conclusion of funding from our primary sponsor came to its end, leaving me at a turning point. 

I made the decision to step out on my own, to continue to grow the mission of this program independently.  It felt like the right direction to take- it would enable the program to be its own artistic and cultural entity, and work towards the social and musical goals that are at the heart of this community music program.  After much deliberation and thinking, Strong Harbour Strings came to be.  The change came with encouragement and support from the NSYO.  We continue to find ways to work together as community partners.

There are currently 20 students in Strong Harbour Strings, most of whom have been with us since the beginning of the program, when it was the Suncor Energy Strings Program.   They stayed because they love music, because they love learning, because they thrive under the mentorship of the teaching artists, because they are getting good and want to keep on getting good, because they are a community now and have made important friends that they only see at music lessons.  They stayed because they didn’t know how curious they were, and now the floodgates have been opened.

Each student comes twice a week, once for individual instruction, and once for chamber music.  This year, we are starting even the beginning-est of beginners in chamber groups, because we want to teach them from the start that their voice is important, that their part matters, and that among many other things music is about communication and growing together.

The Teaching Artists with Strong Harbour Strings are also the members of my String Quartet.   The Strataphoria String Quartet was an independent project, but it is my hope that Strong Harbour Strings will become a viable career option for not only the quartet but for other professional musicians in Newfoundland and Labrador.

It’s all very exciting.  Things are still stabilizing, but there is a palpable energy in the air that reassures me that everything is going to work out.   At every corner, I meet more people who are excited to support this program and offer encouragement along the way.

In between setting up Strong Harbour Strings and developing a String Quartet, I also got married!  In June 2014, I tied the knot with Sheldon surrounded by both of our incredibly large families.  We then drove 3,000 km from SK to NL (including an 8 hour ferry from Nova Scotia to the west coast of Newfoundland) to put down a few roots together in St. John’s.   You’ll all meet Sheldon, someday, I promise!

Sending all my love to all of you!

Many hugs,
Carole
CMW Violin Fellow ’09-’11

To learn more about Carole Bestvater’s work you can visit the Strong Harbour Strings website.  You can also watch a short interview she did recently for a local TV station!