What are some of the qualities of a model music student? 

Jesse Holstein: I would say the student’s curiosity has to be piqued and the student has to be intrin­sically motivated. So if he or she is just learning music for the sake of the parents or for the sake of trying to reach some sort of standardized level, it’s not really going to work. If a student is really curious about the process and is motivated from within, then it starts to get really interesting as a teacher. Parental involvement is also really critical. Not when a parent is involved so much that the child doesn’t have any intrinsic motivation, but if intrinsic motivation is coupled with a parent who shows an interest in letting the child grow on his or her own, then amazing things can happen.

How do you try to foster rapport with your students?

Jesse Holstein: I think students really need to feel safe around the teacher. Meaning, if they make a mistake or they’re having trouble, it’s not really a bad thing, just another opportunity to explore why something isn’t working. It’s not a punitive sort of feeling, but it’s just that curiosity is sparked, they feel supported and safe, and that they can go at their own pace. I think that as a teacher, part of my responsibility is to be a chameleon and to be really flexible to all my students’ learning styles. Some kids pick up things very quickly where others struggle, so I have to be really flexible. I have to ask myself, “How can I access this student’s creativity?” And there are so many different avenues—I feel like I’m just getting started.

Read the rest of Jesse's interview here.

After a terrific career with CMW that dates back to teaching cello lessons at the West End Community Center in 1999, Heath Marlow will be leaving this fall to become Program Director of the Sistema Fellows Program at the New England Conservatory. As you may know, CMW has enjoyed a partnership with NEC as it has developed this fellowship program over the past three years, including a year of "cross-training" for CMW's and NEC's Fellows this past year. The important common theme in our respective work is creating careers for musicians that combine music and social action in the USA.

Pretending to listen intently during a recent Fellowship Seminar (June 2012)

We are thrilled for Heath that the next phase of his career will still find him working on the important question of how musicians can have significant social impact. Needless to say, we'll be sad to lose him as a daily colleague and indefatigable leader. During Heath's tenure at CMW, he has established many critical partnerships that have brought CMW press, funding opportunities, guest musicians, and public acclaim, to say nothing of his work producing and performing in inspired concerts during CMW's growth over the last decade.

Discussing logistics during the Borromeo String Quartet's residency (May 2003)

The work of preparing a new generation of musicians for entrepreneurial careers will be nothing new for Heath, since he has already been an important mentor to CMW's Fellows as they have planned new programs, to colleague organizations (such as Music Haven and musiConnects) in their early years of organization-building, and to participants in our Institutes for Musicianship and Public Service.

Presenting about CMW's development practices at an IMPS (November 2009)

In dreaming, planning, and executing all manner of innovations and projects at CMW, Heath has been an invaluable partner to me. I am glad that we will be able to continue to work together over the next three months as this transition unfolds.

-Sebastian Ruth, Founder & Artistic Director

[Editor: View the press release regarding Heath's new position at NEC's website.]

Here are two images of Julia pretending to busk outside the CMW storefront earlier this month, as captured by Jori. Note my skepticism as I withhold my dollar bill… this is because Julia can't actually play the violin!

Over many years, Julia and I have enjoyed this running bit of humor, ever since I showed up at her house to solicit fundraising advice carrying my cello case. Julia joining our staff this month represents a significant moment in CMW culture: the first time CMW fundraising will be directed by someone who hasn't also split their time between performing, teaching, and the myriad of other responsibilities that CMW staff positions have been known for over the organization's fifteen-year history.

Joining Sebastian (see his entry below), I'm elated that Julia has agreed to lead CMW's fundraising strategy and development efforts.

-Heath Marlow, Managing Director

We are very pleased to announce that Julia Emlen has joined CMW as our Director of Development. This is a new position that reflects CMW's growth as an organization, and our plans to grow in the coming years.

Julia joins us after a long association with CMW that dates back to the Fall of 2000, when I attended a one-day class she taught on newsletter writing. (View a CMW newsletter from 2002 here.) I was impressed with her knowledge of non-profit communications, and after the class asked her if I could pick her brain about growing CMW, which was at the time in its fourth year. What followed was a memorable coffee date, in which Julia gave me dozens of ideas for building the organization, the first of which was to solicit her for a gift. I squirmed until she instructed me how to do it, and I left that meeting with her personal commitment of support. Julia has been an informal adviser ever since. 

Over the past eighteen months, with capacity building funding from the Rhode Island Foundation's Initiative for Nonprofit Excellence, we have worked with Julia as a consultant to review our development and communications strategy, and to recommend changes that will enable us to grow. She comes to us with a stellar national reputation as an expert in philanthropy, having consulted to organizations across the country as the principal of Julia S. Emlen Associates for many years, and before that overseeing donor relations for Brown University.

Please help us welcome Julia by introducing yourself to her at the next CMW concert.

-Sebastian Ruth, Founder & Artistic Director

Former CMW resident musician Jessie Montgomery (2004-2009) joins current CMW resident musician Sara Stalnaker to perform Martinu's Duo No. 1 at CMW's 15th season reunion concert at The RISD Museum on June 10.

Wrapping up CMW's season-long exploration of Bela Bartok's 44 Violin Duos, current and former CMW resident musicians, fellows, students, and guests perform several sets of duos during CMW's 15th season reunion concert at The RISD Museum.

Guest violinist Jorge Gardos shares his personal connection with Hungarian folk music, joined by Sebastian during CMW's 15th season reunion concert at The RISD Museum on June 10.

Scratch is a composition for string orchestra and field recordings. The strings section is in C major and based on a melody first exposed in the viola section. Underlying the strings part, there is texture of sounds recorded at a string restoration workshop. The piece is largely in sonata form with an interlude in the middle that could most accurately be described as a solo by the operator of the cassette tape players, which contain the recorded sounds from the field recordings. Big thanks to Gus from Zachary S. Martin, Luthier Contrabass & Cello workshop in Pawtucket, RI for having us record sounds in the workshop.

-Liam Hopkins, Phase II

Recorded at The RISD Museum of Art on June 10, 2012

An essay by CMW founder Sebastian Ruth appears in Building Communities, Not Audiences, the recently published volume of essays edited by Doug Borwick, past President of the Board of the Association of Arts Administration Educators and former Director of the Arts Management and Not-for-Profit Management Programs at Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC. Here is an excerpt of Sebastian's essay, and the book is available for purchase from Amazon.

Although in some ways [CMW's] storefronts are merely symbolic of our commitment to impacting the neighborhood, sometimes, as with the young children who stopped to listen to our Haydn quartet, they become an opportunity for direct engagement. On one occasion, a group of teenage boys walked by our rehearsal and made a teasing gesture at us when we were rehearsing, (also shouting a profanity that we assumed to be aimed in our direction). Every day for several months at about the same time, the same group of kids would walk by, and each time we waved and continued to rehearse. Over time that year, we developed a relationship, simply through the glass windows, with these kids as they walked by and gradually their gestures and comments morphed into a friendly exchange. By the end of the year they were waving back and dancing as they walked by.

We think of there being many circles of impact we make on our community. At the innermost ring are the hundred or so young people who participate in our programs, coming multiple times per week for lessons, special classes in improvisation, fiddle styles, ensembles, studio classes, and more. At the next ring might be the audiences who hear our concerts in public settings, get to know our musicians, and support the mission of the organization. The passers-by, the kids who see us through the windows of the storefront and may or may not stop to listen, are part of our outer ring of influence. My hope is that even if they’re not deeply involved in our programs and music making, these kids know what it is to see a string quartet rehearsing, and the next time they encounter one, they are less likely to find it something completely foreign, and more likely to say, "Oh yeah, I’ve got one of those on my block." Whether or not a member of the neighborhood participates in our programs, at least they understand that it’s available and that it can be a normal feature of community life.

See Liz's video tribute to Robin and Ariana here.