Adrienne Taylor will be performing music for cello and piano by Britten, Prokofiev and Debussy at the Boston Athenaeum with pianist Aaron Jackson on Tuesday evening, May 22 at 6 pm. The concert is free, and you can find the details here.

More photos by Jori in CMW's Flickr account.

On March 30 and 31, musicians from Ravinia's Steans Institute for Music visited CMW for a two-day Institute for Musicianship and Public Service.

Along with seminars during the day, the musicians (including program director Miriam Fried, pictured) participated in CMW's Youth Salon on Friday evening and performed Schubert's Cello Quintet at an event for CMW supporters on Saturday evening.

Photos by Jori

Over Easter weekend, concerts in Providence and Amherst (MA) by Jesse and Heath, with old friends Jeff Louie and Dmitry Kustanovich, raised more than $3,000 for CMW's Fred Kelley Memorial Scholarship Fund. As Jesse told those who had turned out to hear a program of Brahms, Mozart and Schubert, this fund will help pay for four CMW students to attend the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music this summer. As a pre-formed string quartet, they are already hard at work on a Shostakovich string quartet to perform in New Hampshire in July.

Enjoy some Mozart, as performed by Jesse and Dmitry at the Bell Street Chapel.

Mozart Duo No. 1 – Rondeau (Allegro)

-Heath Marlow, Managing Director

For over three years, the Boston Youth Arts Evaluation Project (BYAEP) has worked on developing the framework and tools that identify and effectively measure the three main outcome areas characteristic of youth arts programs. These areas relate to artistic expression (I Create), identity (I Am), and community (We Connect).

The result of thousands of hours of research, discussions, experimentation, and analysis of results can be found in this downloadable 168-page handbook and workbook. We welcome other youth arts organizations to use our framework, adapt our tools, and to track, articulate, and improve their own youth development outcome areas. Through the challenge of an intense multi-year collaboration, BYAEP now offers the youth arts field a rich guide filled with resources and tools.

Visit the Boston Youth Arts Evaluation Project's website here.

-Kathe Swaback, BYAEP Project Leader

i LOVE this song but it's a little sad but the song is beautiful. i'm in LOVE with this song. i can't wait until we play this song. i listened to the song about ten times while i was writing this WHOLE comment. i'm so happy we get to use vibrato for this song. it's going to sound soooooooooo good. i listened a lot today. even my sister LOVES this song. i never thought i would write this much. i think i wrote a paragraph. i'm looking foward to playing this song for my class on my share day. i like the parts that use vibrato. they sound cool. this is the first song we play with vibrato. my baby brother is trying to eat the jelly beans in my (vibrato) egg but i don't let him. i don't know why i wrote a lot.

-Lizbeth (posted on the Media Lab website)

From Aaron's most recent report, sounds like things are going well for his El Sistema-inspired program up in New Brunswick, Canada.

Music is Sistema’s means, not its end. “I don’t even necessarily want them to be musicians, I just want them to be able to excel at something and, by doing that, be able to dream,” McFarlane said. Read the article in its entirety here and here.

Emmy (pictured) played the part of Bela Bartok on April 5 at three shows we performed for the Paul Cuffee Elementary School and TAPA (Trinity Academy for the Performing Arts), in which Bartok gets mad when musicians don't play his music with feeling. Helped by the students in the audience, the musicians do a better job bringing his music to life, and then finish the show with an original composition created by the students. Bartok's accomplices included Sara, Minna, and Sebastian.

-Sebastian Ruth, Founder & Artistic Director

Earlier this month, we were all shocked to learn that Chuck Sherba, one of Rhode Island's best-known and most beloved musicians, had been diagnosed with cancer and would need immediate surgery.

Last week, Chuck's operation at Lahey Clinic in Boston was successful. Rhode Island's musical community is now attempting to help Chuck and his wife Consuelo pay for his extremely expensive medical procedures.

A CONCERT OF HOPE AND HEALING to benefit Charles Sherba

Saturday, May 12 at 7:00 pm 
First Unitarian Church

Kathryne Jennings – soprano, Alexi Shabalin – violin, Chloe Kline – viola, Sara Stalnaker – cello, Cheryl Bishkoff – oboe, Ian Greitzer – clarinet, Judy Stillman – piano, Fred Jodry – piano, Chris Turner – reader, and Nigel Gore – reader
 
Schubert: Shepherd on the Rock 
Mozart: Oboe Quartet in F  
Schumann: Piano Quartet in E-flat
Mozart: Variations for piano four hands

Donations of any size are welcome, suggested levels are $100+  Angel, $35 General, $20 Senior, Student, and Artists.

To help fund medical bills, make checks payable to Charles Sherba. All checks may be sent to: Aurea Ensemble, 195 Sessions Stree, Providence, RI 02906.

During the year after my CMW fellowship experience ended, I participated in the Abreu Fellows Program at the New England Conservatory, where studied El Sistema, the world-renowned Venezuelan youth orchestra and social action program. The Abreu fellowship culminated in a trip to Venezuela, where I traveled around the country observing and working in various nucleos, or centers for music.

Adrienne in Venezuela

Nucleos in Venezuela reminded me of CMW in that they are places where students and teachers come together as a community. In Venezeula, because they come together every day, their musical and social experience is magnified, leading to exciting musical progress and deep relationships. This deepening of musical and social experiences is one of CMW's main strategic goals, and I want kids in Providence to experience the kind of intensity that was so powerful to witness in Venezuela.

This year, in addition to working with CMW's new beginner class, Phase II, and the Green Magic Orchestra (during All-Play Day), I have been working on plans to launch a daily, after-school orchestra program in Providence, drawing on what I learned from my experiences at CMW and as an Abreu Fellow in Boston and in Venezuela. I’m excited for our kids to have the musical and social experience of playing together in an orchestra every day. You can expect to hear more details in the coming months.

I am looking for a violinist or violist to help me build this program. Please click here for more information about this opportunity.

-Adrienne Taylor, Third-year Fellow