ANDREI BAUMANN, piano

An active soloist, chamber musician, Andrei Baumann has performed extensively in the USA, Europe, Canada and Venezuela. As winner of the 2009 Borromeo String Quartet Guest Artist Award, he performed with the quartet in Jordan Hall on January 29th, 2009. His Carnegie Hall debut at Weill Recital Hall occurred in May 2008 with violinist Lily Francis as part of the Distinctive Debuts series. Other notable performances include a solo recital on the Sundays Live Concert Series at Los Angeles County Arts Museum which was broadcast by KCSN, 88.5 FM, solo recitals at the Crocker Art Museum Classical Music Series in California, performances at Caramoor Festival and with Itzhak Perlman at the Perlman Music Program. Andrei has performed in masterclasses for such distinguished artists as Elisso Wirssaladze, Pavel Gililov, Leon Fleisher, Claude Frank and Marc Durand. Among the numerous festivals he has participated in are Corsi in Sermoneta, Italy; Ost-West Musikfest in Krems, Austria; Internationaler Kammermusikkurs in Böhlen, Germany; Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival in Finland; Banff Centre for the Arts and Orford Arts Centre in Canada; and in the USA, Aspen Music Festival, Perlman Music Program.

Recent performances have included a Mothers Day performance (2017) of the Grieg Piano Concerto with Peter Jaffe and the Auburn Symphony, and numerous chamber music performances with cellist Susan Lamb Cook and friends. Mr. Baumann is a frequent performer at the Mondavi Center, Harris Center, Crocker Art Museum and others venues in Northern California. He also recently released a second album Miroirs, which includes works by Bach, Debussy and Ravel.

Mr. Baumann has a Masters of Music in Piano Performance from New England Conservatory in Boston, a Künstlerischer Ausbildung Diploma from the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Stuttgart, Germany, and a Bachelor of Music degree at the Glenn Gould School of The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, Canada. His most influential teachers have been Andre Laplante, Jamie Saltman and Vivian Hornik Weilerstein.

Mr. Baumann has been a piano faculty member at the Rivers School Conservatory in Weston, MA, Head of the Piano Department at Camp Encore/Coda in Sweden, Maine, and piano faculty at the Sacramento Youth Symphony Summer Chamber Music Workshop. Additionally, he has been a jury member at the A. Ramon Rivera Piano Competition at Rivers School Conservatory in Weston.

Currently living in Providence, RI, Mr. Baumann performs regularly as a soloist and chamber musician with members of Community Music Works. Recent collaborations have included programs with the Newport, RI dance group Island Moving Company. He teaches locally at the Rhode Island Philharmonic Music School.

MINNA CHOI, violin

Minna Choi is part of the “lifer club” at CMW and serves as the Fellowship Program Director. A graduate of Brown University, Minna has been a resident musician since CMW’s opening season and was a founding member of the Providence String Quartet. She earned her Master of Music in Violin Performance from the Hartt School of Music, where she was a winner of the Miami String Quartet competition. Minna has performed with the Boston Philharmonic and Rhode Island Philharmonic, and with the Borromeo, Turtle Island, and St. Lawrence String Quartets and violist Kim Kashkashian. Influential teachers include Eric Rosenblith, Katie Lansdale, and Lois Finkel. Minna’s interest in education began in her undergraduate years while studying the works of John Dewey, and she is passionate about music education as a vehicle for youth development. She lives in Providence with her husband, two girls and a beloved orange tabby cat, and in her spare time enjoys finding new recipes, practicing yoga and exploring RI hikes.

KAMYRON WILLIAMS, cello

Kamyron is Teaching Artist Fellow at CMW. He is originally from Tampa (FL) where his musical training started when his best friend persuaded him to join the middle school orchestra program in order to have a class together. This spontaneous entrance into the orchestra community has since led him to an abundance of opportunities as a performer, collaborator, and educator. While Kamyron has performed on stages across the Midwest and New England, his work with diversity-oriented arts organizations, ensembles, and initiatives has garnered significant attention, in the “American Black Journal” series on PBS and NPR Michigan Radio. After both performing and leading community outreach for the Sphinx Organization, he has dedicated his musical passion to tackling the challenges of equity, attendance, and enthusiasm that classical music still struggles to overcome. Kamyron holds degrees from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (B.M.) and the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater & Dance (M.M. and Specialist Degree).

Listening: Making music is a lifelong pursuit of joy and truth. Its foundation is listening. At CMW, we value listening as a practice of community, a practice of music, a practice of respect.

Equity and Responsiveness: We value the qualities of justice, equity, fairness, and welcoming which are the hallmarks of a culture of belonging.  

Creative Practice: We value each individual’s creative capability and contribution – – as musicians, as community members, and as citizens.

Continual learning: We value ongoing, reciprocal learning that is grounded in curiosity, humility, reflection, and open-mindedness. 

Love and Respect: We value a community where relationships are of the utmost importance and where people are recognized and honored as individuals with a unique voice.

Community MusicWorks (CMW) creates new roles for musicians as artists, educators, and citizens concerned with the well-being of our communities. Based in the rich context of the vibrant arts scene of Providence, RI since 1997, CMW has strong leadership, deep community connections, healthy finances, and an extensive network of alumni.

Our Strategic Plan for the next five years includes several initiatives that address our physical space, pedagogy and performance activities, our commitment to racial equity, and the deepening of our work in the many concentric circles of learning communities that touch our organization.

Plans to begin construction on a building of our own, the Community MusicWorks Center, represent a major turning point for the organization, and bring with it new possibilities in community building, along with a thoughtful approach to navigating the ways in which this building changes the landscape of our neighborhood.

CMW is nationally recognized and enjoys the camaraderie of like-minded groups around the country and globally. As the classical music field is changing to incorporate a wider range of professional avenues and to make the genre more accessible, responsive, and relevant to diverse audiences, CMW is seen as a forerunner in rethinking classical music’s roles in communities.  

As we embark on this new chapter, our work is happening against a backdrop of political divisiveness and deepening inequities, including an ongoing pandemic, that directly impacts our community. Thus, CMW’s longstanding commitment to racial equity work takes on an even greater urgency. We are buoyed by strengthening national discourse around racial justice and have set the course to deepening our own work in this area.

STRATEGIC AREAS OF FOCUS: 2020-2025

#1. OUR PLACE/OUR SPACE: BUILD A CULTURE OF BELONGING

Community MusicWorks is committed to creating a welcoming environment that builds a sense of belonging. This emphasis forms the basis of our teaching, performing, and community building relationships, and guides the creation of our new physical home. 

OBJECTIVES

• Engage parents, students, and neighbors in the planning of a facility that supports community connection and enhances the neighborhood’s musical life while honoring the history of the land on which it is built.
• Create a space that offers opportunities for youth to make music, build connections, and envision powerful futures.  
• Establish the Community MusicWorks Center as a place for residents of and visitors to Providence to find a supportive and engaging musical community.
  

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#2. ANTI-RACIST PRACTICE: ADVANCE OUR COMMITMENT TO RACE EQUITY

CMW is committed to race equity and resisting the complicity and perpetuation of racism, especially in the area of classical music training and performance. Through continuous discovery, learning and commitment to the process, our work will address power dynamics as they relate to individual and collective experiences of students, teachers, staff, and the community. 

OBJECTIVES

• Integrate our commitment to racial equity into our pedagogy and performance. 
• Identify and undo racist practices by changing systems, organizational structures, policies, practices and attitudes so that power is redistributed and shared equitably. 
• Work toward an increasingly diverse leadership and teaching staff at CMW. 
• Define an antiracist framework to support the development of young people across the MusicWorks Network.

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#3. OUR LEARNING COMMUNITY: CULTIVATE RECIPROCAL LEARNING

CMW is committed to continued learning and sharing regarding the impact, value, and practice of musician residencies in communities. We spark and support conversations around integrating music education, performance, and social justice practice and aim to nurture a diverse and vibrant community of practitioners. 

OBJECTIVES

• Establish new ways of supporting young professional musicians’ learning in and with CMW.
• Support ongoing learning and growth of all staff.
• Continue to be a responsive and active participant, convenor, facilitator, and thought leader in the larger field, nationally and internationally. 
• Share stories of CMW’s programmatic approaches so that people at large are aware of the impact of our programs.

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#4 PEDAGOGY AND PERFORMANCE: AMPLIFY CREATIVE VOICE

CMW’s distinctive pedagogical and performance practices are deeply informed by our commitment to social justice. We support the passions and professional development of our teaching artists, encourage the engagement and technical progress of our students, and deepen our responsiveness to our community and audiences. 

OBJECTIVES

• Support teachers to build a toolbox of anti-racist pedagogical practices and techniques that support 
• student agency, with a focus on improvisation and composition.
• Engage CMW alumni and other community musicians as teachers, role models and eventually, leaders in the program. 
• Explore the full range of musical voices in the concert tradition, and apply an anti-racist and anti-oppression lens to our performance planning and practice.
• Commission music that integrates performance, pedagogy, social justice goals, and expands the MusicWorks Collective’s concert life through opportunities to perform around and outside New England.

Sonata Series Event #2 is a program of rich colors and profound depths of emotion featuring violinist Sarah Kim and cellist Miguel Vasquez, and violist Sebastian Ruth joined by pianist Eliko Akahori.

This event presents Ravel’s luminous and evocative Sonata for Violin and Cello paired with Shostakovich’s haunting and monumental Viola Sonata and includes conversations with the performers.

Click here to watch it on our YouTube channel

Eliko Akahori, piano (guest artist)
Eliko has appeared as a recitalist, chamber musician, and collaborative pianist in the United States, Europe, and Asia.  Recent performances include recitals with Mai Motobuchi, violist in the Borromeo Quartet, and concerts with A Far Cry, Winsor Music, Cantata Singers and Music at Eden’s Edge.   Ms. Akahori collaborated with Vienna Philharmonic principal flutist Karl-Heinz Schütz in recording two CDs that were released in 2014 along with a series of recitals in the U.S., Austria and Spain.  She received the first prize, Coleman-Barstow Award, in the 57^th Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition.  Past collaborators in recitals, chamber music concerts, recordings, and radio and television broadcasts include members of the Berlin Philharmonic and the Chicago, Montreal, Boston and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras, among others.  Ms. Akahori has performed in many festivals including the Banff Centre in Canada, IMAI in Maine, and the Pacific Music Festival in Japan.  Ms. Akahori holds a Doctorate of Music in Collaborative Piano and Master’s degree in Music Theory, both from the New England Conservatory of Music.  She is currently a senior performance faculty and director of the music performance program at Wellesley College.

Sarah Kim, violin
Sarah joined CMW as a resident musician in 2017. From 2008-2013, Sarah was a member of the Apple Hill String Quartet, resident ensemble of the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music. Based in Kansas City from 2013-2017, Sarah enjoyed teaching a wide spectrum of students and received the 2015 Studio Teacher Award from the Missouri chapter of the American String Teachers Association. Sarah holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stony Brook University, a Master of Music degree from the Yale School of Music, and a Bachelor of Music degree from Indiana University where her principal teachers included Pamela Frank, Phil Setzer, Peter Oundjian, and Miriam Fried. 

Sebastian Ruth, viola
Sebastian, a violinist and violist, is CMW’s Founder & Artistic Director. A graduate of Brown University, Sebastian has been a member of the Wild Ginger Philharmonic and the Boston Philharmonic and has performed with members of the Borromeo, Muir, Miro, Orion, and Turtle Island String Quartets, and with pianist Jonathan Biss and violist Kim Kashkashian. Influential teachers include Eric Rosenblith, Rolfe Sokol, Lois Finkel, Pamela Gearhart, Mela Tenenbaum, and Kim Kashkashian. Sebastian is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, recognized for “forging a new, multifaceted role beyond the concert hall for the twenty-first-century musician”, and an honorary doctorate degree from Brown University. Sebastian has served as a Visiting Lecturer at the Yale School of Music, where he designed and taught courses exploring the theoretical foundations of CMW, and has served as an Assistant Professor of the Practice of Music at Brown University. His Coursera course “Music and Social Action” has had over 17,000 learners. Sebastian has spoken at the Ford Foundation, the Kennedy Center, Florida State University, TEDxProvidence, and other venues on citizen artistry, entrepreneurship, and music, and joined nine other artists as part of the RISD Museum’s Raid the Icebox NOW exhibit. Sebastian is married to violinist Minna Choi, and their two daughters, Juna Maya and Elia Ahn, are his current teachers about life.

Miguel Vásquez, cello
Miguel is an active performer and educator in the New England area. Miguel has participated in several music festivals, including the Tanglewood Music Center in 2017 and the Youth Orchestra of the Americas, where he was part of their 2009-2013 tours, as well as in their Carnegie Hall concert in 2010. Miguel graduated with a Bachelor of Music in 2014 from Longy School of Music of Bard College and Emerson College in Boston, where he studied with Boston Symphony Orchestra cellist Mihail Jojatu. In 2016, he graduated with a Master’s degree in Cello Performance from the New England Conservatory where he studied with Borromeo Quartet cellist Yeesun Kim. 

Bach to the Future: Bite-Size Bach 

This year’s Bach marathon is a sprint!

Click to listen to a short-and-sweet audio version of our traditional J. S. Bach extravaganza! This online Bach to the Future presentation packs all the tasty goodness of our annual overnight event into a one-hour wafer-thin ‘Bach in bite-size’ form.

PERFORMER BIOS AND PROGRAM NOTES:

ENIGMATICA is a New England-based mandolin ensemble directed by Marilynn Mair. Part chamber orchestra and part plucked-string double-quartet, Enigmatica performs a variety of music: Baroque, Brazilian, eclectic contemporary, and music written by group members and friends. The ensemble features instruments of the mandolin family — mandolin, mandola, octave mandolin and mandocello — and 6- and 7-string guitars. Ensemble members come from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.

CHLOË KLINE is CMW’s Education Director. Chloë’s practice focuses on the intersection of creative youth development, equity and inclusion, and the field of classical music. She believes deeply in the importance of inquiry and creative practice for young people as individuals and as community members. She holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in viola performance from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University, where she was a student of Martha Katz. Chloë earned a Master’s degree in Arts in Education from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education in 2005, and joined CMW the following year as a member of the Fellowship Program’s pilot class. Chloë is also a faculty member with the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles National Institute.

EDEN RAYZ is a Boston-based cellist and composer. She’s most known as a session cellist and as the extreme vocalist for death metal bands Scaphism and Angel Grinder. She’s set to self-release her first EP called Corpus Vice in the coming months.

Notes from the performer on “Cello Suite No. II in D minor IV: Sarabande, Destabilized”: This version of the first half of Bach’s D minor Sarabande from his Cello Suites is improvised using Bach’s content, but Rayz’s timbral, formal, and microtonal language. Though it was recorded in roughly 3 parts, it’s still imagined as a solo cello performance, contributing to what she describes as “an additive hell.” The discomfort of the exposition slowly gives way to catharsis.

JOE DEGEORGE is a composer, musician, and sound artist living in Providence, Rhode Island. He is a member of the bands Harry and the Potters and Downtown Boys. His performances of “Switched-Off Bach” and “In Glove With Bach” are always a highlight of Bach To The Future.

Notes from the performer on “Variations on Some Invention Riffs”: In March, Kara took me to a weekend rental somewhere in rural New York that had a 19th century pipe organ installed in a barn haunted by an old organ mechanic and a sad dog. I brought my tape recorder hoping to make some tapes of my own organ performances. I had been developing a practice through the pandemic of spontaneous improvisation. I had never really spent any significant time playing a pipe organ so this was really my first intimate encounter with such an instrument. I made an hour long tape recording of spontaneous improvisation. I selected a six minute chunk of that tape in which I was riffin’ heavily on a few phrases Bach had penned in his Inventions. Maybe we can call this “Variations on some Invention Riffs?” Who knows what it actually sounded like when Bach was riffin’ on his own keyboards and writing music, but maybe this recording has some fraction of an essense of Bach’s moments of creation; a piece of the joy of inventing.

PEDRO REIS studies piano with Manabu Takasawa.

MANABU TAKASAWA is a Professor of Music at Rhode Island College.

KAMYRON WILLIAMS, a cellist and Teaching Artist Fellow at CMW, is originally from Tampa (FL) where his musical training started when his best friend persuaded him to join the middle school orchestra program in order to have a class together. This spontaneous entrance into the orchestra community has since led him to an abundance of opportunities as a performer, collaborator, and educator. While Kamyron has performed on stages across the Midwest and New England, his work with diversity-oriented arts organizations, ensembles, and initiatives has garnered significant attention, in the “American Black Journal” series on PBS and NPR Michigan Radio. After both performing and leading community outreach for the Sphinx Organization, he has dedicated his musical passion to tackling the challenges of equity, attendance, and enthusiasm that classical music still struggles to overcome. Kamyron holds degrees from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (B.M.) and the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater & Dance (M.M. and Specialist Degree).

Violinist James Buswell greets student Roma Taitwood in a 2017 masterclass. CMW Resident Musician Jesse Holstein shares a remembrance.

On September 28th, my long-time teacher and mentor violinist James Buswell passed away at the age of 74. My first ever lesson with him was in the summer of 1993 at the Musicorda Music Festival at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts, and my last was just this past spring on Zoom.

What always astounded me about Mr. Buswell was that he was such a complete artist and teacher. He was one of the great violinists of the 20th and 21st century, but what was rare about a violinist of his caliber is that he could diagnose any technical issue in one’s playing clearly and comprehensively and then vividly demonstrate possible solutions, no matter the student’s level. His musicianship was holistic and deep, and his musical choices and suggestions were always informed by an incredibly refined knowledge of style, language, color, literature, and historical context, among other considerations. Even his fingerings (what finger to use on a particular note) and bowings (what direction and articulation to use with the bow) were always crafted and curated to maximize the music’s meaning and impact.

Beyond this, he was always supportive and cared deeply for his students, and would always go the extra mile to offer advice or encouragement. Just last year, I was asked to give an online masterclass on a piece I had never performed or studied, the Poéme by Ernest Chausson. I reached out to him to see if he could share with me his edition of the piece. This alone would have been helpful and generous, but in addition to getting the pdf of his part, he called me that night and we proceeded to go over the piece together and he offered insights and suggestions for well over an hour.

We were lucky to have Mr. Buswell visit Community MusicWorks, once in April of 2016 and again in January of 2017 to offer masterclasses to our students, the latter visit accompanied by his wife, cellist Carol Ou, who offered a cello masterclass. What stuck with me from those events was the passion, the encouragement, and the simply ingenious teaching he and Carol offered our young musicians.

Mr. Buswell and his wife, cellist Carol Ou, treated each student as if they were colleagues, but just at a different point of their journey with music.

I can only hope that I can pass along as much knowledge as Mr. Buswell gave to me…onto his ‘grand students,’ my students at CMW.

–Jesse Holstein, violinist and CMW Senior Resident Musician 

Welcome to Season 25!

Our Sonata Series premiere shines a spotlight on a frequently maligned instrument: the viola. Often the subject of derision, jokes about the viola abound. Not cool. With this piece, guest pianist (and husband of a violist) Ivan Tan gives the instrument some well-deserved love.

“Its career has been an interesting and singularly checkered one: originally the oldest and most important of the string family, its prestige gradually diminished until it became a mere drudge, necessary for the balance of part-writing, but hardly considered worthy of much notice in itself…

…The tone of the viola is apt to become slightly monotonous in an entire recital, as it has not as large or brilliant a range of tone-color as the violin or the cello…”

– Rebecca Clarke, “Viola”, Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music (1929)

“Oops.”

– Jake Pietroniro and Lisa Sailer (2021)

Though often playing a purely supportive function in ensemble textures, the viola can also be a powerful soloistic force in its own right; the ability of skilled violists to navigate seamlessly between these disparate roles makes them particularly attractive chamber music partners. Especially since the turn of the 20th century, and inspired by pioneering virtuoso performers like Lionel Tertis and William Primrose, composers have written works that showcase the viola’s distinctively dusky timbre.

In fact, George Rochberg’s Viola Sonata was commissioned by the American Viola Society in honor of Primrose’s 75th birthday in 1979. Fascinated with the interplay between performers inherent in the duo sonata format, Rochberg had begun working on his own violin sonata in 1942, but abandoned the project after he was drafted into the army. The sonata’s pre-war origins are especially apparent in the first movement, whose harmonic content is influenced by Rochberg’s interest in the music of Béla Bartók. The heart of the piece, however, is the bluesy second movement: Rochberg has written that its “dirgelike, singing character” was what convinced him that the sonata would sound “natural” on the viola. Eventually, Rochberg’s wife Gene convinced him to add a third movement, though Rochberg resisted the traditional “stormy finale” in favor of a short epilogue that contains fleeting reminiscences of themes from the first movement.

Unlike Rochberg (whose main instrument was the piano), Rebecca Clarke was a virtuoso violist, and her 1919 Viola Sonata has become a repertory staple. Throughout the sonata, Clarke uses her intimate knowledge of the viola to show off its technical capabilities and timbral palette: the striking cadenza that opens the first movement and the shimmering harmonics in the quicksilver second movement belie Clarke’s description of the instrument as “awkward and difficult,” while more lyrical themes in all three movements explore the viola’s melodic potential. As with Rochberg, Clarke inserts themes from the first movement into a formally looser, almost improvisatory last movement, though here the thematic recall works in favor of a large-scale dramatic ending.

The viola’s importance extends behind the scenes of this concert, performed at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music in Nelson, NH, where many CMW faculty and students go every year to participate in its Summer Chamber Music Workshop. Mike Kelley, the violist of the Apple Hill String Quartet, recorded and produced the concert, and both Jake and Lisa have studied viola with Lenny Matczynski, Apple Hill’s director. In preparing for this performance, we’ve enjoyed celebrating the longstanding association between Apple Hill and CMW, and prominently featuring a well-deserving but underappreciated instrument!

— Ivan Tan, pianist

Watch the premiere of Sonata Series Event #1, featuring MusicWorks Collective violists Jake Pietroniro and Lisa Sailer, joined by guest pianist Ivan Tan, for two remarkable duo pieces that showcase the rich and soulful sonorities of the viola.

Spotlight on the viola!

This season the Sonata Series returns online and presents varied programs with less-often heard works along with several mainstays of the repertoire, and features illuminating conversations with the performers.

Sonata Series Event #1 features MusicWorks Collective violists Jake Pietroniro and Lisa Sailer, viola, joined by guest artist Ivan Tan on piano for two remarkable duo pieces that showcase the rich and soulful sonorities of the viola.

Join us on YouTube on October 14 at 7 pm EST for Sonata Series Event #1, where the rich and soulful sonorities of the viola are showcased in two remarkable pieces.

Twentieth-century American composer George Rochberg wrote serial music for much of his career, but took a sharp turn in style after a tragic life event left him feeling that atonal writing didn’t contain enough expressive range for his grief. His Viola Sonata demonstrates a departure that is romantic in nature with its bold expressiveness, that at times hints of his earlier style. Also featured  is the majestic Viola Sonata by Rebecca Clarke, written in 1919 shortly after the composer emigrated to the United States from Britain. From its riveting opening notes, the piece draws the listener into a singular sound world and dramatic arc.

Thursday, October 14 at 7 pm EST
CMW’s YouTube Channel

At the end of this summer, my partner Ealáin encouraged me to take a retreat to get centered for the upcoming CMW season. After a short look around the internet, a barn loft on a working farm in Willington, Connecticut, popped up on Airbnb for a five day stay. Bluebird Farm is a lovely spot in the town of Willington, a small rural hamlet about thirty minutes from Hartford.

While there, I was able to practice, run, meditate, visit friends in nearby Windsor, CT and spend lazy afternoons doing crossword puzzles in the farm’s lovely gazebo. However, I think what was most special to me about my time on Bluebird Farm was the menagerie of animals who lived there. Pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, guinea hens, ducks, and a cow named Jojo lived in harmony in a field next to the barn. Also in residence were eight cats and seven dogs, three of whom were professionals – livestock guardians that kept an eye on all of the animals and looked out for any potential nighttime predators. These working dogs were a lovely breed called Maremma Sheepdogs, and they kept a strict rotating schedule and took no guff from the other animals. The friendliest cat was a large Tom named Jean Valjean who was on regular patrol of the grounds. Carmen, one of the owners of Bluebird Farm, showed me where the grain was kept for the animals, and said I could feed them whenever I wanted. It was awesome to see the goats and sheep emerge from their little shelter to run towards me when I appeared with the grain bucket.

Jojo the cow, ½ Angus, ½ Holstein (no relation) would also come running for grain, seemingly unaware of his size or the power of his tongue. Curious about how he would respond to the violin, I played an improvised tune for JoJo, what I’ll call a Bovine Bourrée, and he seemed to enjoy it. Two of the sheepdogs also came over for the short serenade. As you can see from the video, they were an attentive and receptive audience!

All in all, a little solitude and quality time on the farm was just what I needed to get ready for Season 25 at CMW. I hope to see you at an event soon. Music-loving barn animals are always welcome!

– Jesse Holstein