Reminder: May 20-23 IMPS applications are due March 15.

Thanks to Jori, documentation of the March 2008 Imagining Art + Social Change conference is available in the form of a beautifully designed 38-page book. You can order your own copy of the book at blurb.com for $19.95, where you can also enjoy an online preview!

I was completely in love with the idea of playing string quartets professionally but really disenchanted with where people traditionally play string quartets and how its done. Simultaneously, I was very intrigued with the idea of music playing a role in education and specifically a role in transforming people's lives. I was working at Brown on some independent projects on music and moral education and finding those books and those conversations somewhat too oriented around what's good behavior and what's not good behavior. That's not the idea of moral education that I was fascinated with. I was more interested with what music can stir in someone's inner life in a very significant way that would make them want change personally. -Sebastian Ruth

You can also find all sorts of documentation of the conference at CMW's website (also available thanks to Jori).

-Heath Marlow, CMW staff

During February vacation's "Teaching Intensive Week," several CMW staff led special classes, including pilot classes designed for the parents of CMW students. Carole offered a class to help parents learn the basics of reading music. Here are a few excerpts:

Looking at a piece of music

We constantly are using terminology and symbols to write down these musical concepts to understand them. I often describe it as learning another language, because there are so many different small details to memorize and integrate into your thinking. When we first look at a piece of music, there are a few basic things that you will always see, and identifying these things is key to understanding how the musical notation on the paper relates to the music that we hear all the time. 

Pitch is exactly how high or low a sound is.

Note is the symbol we use to write pitches down on paper. The different parts of notes are head, stem, flag.

The Staff is the five lines and four spaces where we put our notes. Each line and space is given a name from the musical alphabet: A-B-C-D-E-F-G-A, and it repeats indefinitely.

At the beginning of a staff, you will see a clef. The clef tells you the name of each line and space. Each clef has a way of showing you where the notes fall on the staff that it is fronting. There are four different clefs, treble, bass, alto, and tenor. The clef is dependent on the instrument it is written for.

Treble clef is also called the G clef, it loops around the G-line on its staff. Higher ranged instruments like the violin, flute, guitar, or trumpet read music in treble clef.

Bass clef is also called the F clef, because its hook and two dots show you the F-line on its staff. Lower ranged instruments like the cello or double bass read music in the bass clef. 

The longest note you will have is a whole note. You can compare shorter note values to a whole note.  When thinking in terms of note lengths, we often use fractions to determine the lengths of notes.

Rests are symbols that show you where the silences are in a piece of music. Every note value has a related rest of the same value. 

Accidentals are symbols that indicate how a note can be altered in sound. There are three different accidentals. A sharp (#) will raise the pitch of a note by one half step. A flat (b) will lower the pitch by one half step. A natural (click here) takes away a flat or a sharp. It brings the note back to its original sound. 

Scales are groups of notes arranged in steps, just like a staircase. It starts and ends on the same note.  There are major scales and minor scales. 

According to Lisa Carnevale of RI Citizens for the Arts, if Governor Carcieri's proposed budget cuts are enacted, "these cuts will have a devastating affect on the creative community and beyond. This budget proposal would eliminate the public art program, the film tax credit and discretionary grant funds, a total cut of 58% – causing a severe hit to the many arts and cultural institutions in our state that liven our cities, attract businesses and jobs, hire locally, buy locally and contribute largely to our economic welfare."

CMW's Phase III teens will be visiting the State House on March 16 during Arts Advocacy Day to share their musicianship and their opinions. In the words of one CMW teen, "I am a completely different person because of [Community MusicWorks]. Being in CMW has given me the opportunity to be a leader among friends, to express myself, to make my voice be heard, to be confident, to be spontaneous, and to be someone who is willing to help."

Want to join Phase III at the State House? Visit RI Citizens for the Arts to learn more about Arts Advocacy Day.

-Heath Marlow, CMW staff

A civic engagement opportunity and a chance to earn extra money. Any CMW parents or other residents of Providence, Central Falls, or Pawtucket interested? Read on…

The United States Census counts every resident in the United States, and is required by the Constitution to take place every 10 years. The 2010 Census will help communities receive more than $400 billion in federal funds each year for things like hospitals, job training centers, schools, senior centers, bridges, tunnels and other-public works projects, and emergency services.

The data collected by the Census also help determine the number of seats your state has in the U.S. House of Representatives. Any personal data collected is protected under federal law (nor will be shared with any other branch of the US government).

The Providence County Census office is seeking applicants who reside in Providence, East Providence, North Providence, Central Falls and Pawtucket for jobs that will start in the Spring of 2010: Field Operation Supervisors, Crew Leaders, Crew Leader Assistants, Census Takers.

Census Takers within these areas will make $15 – $16/hour and their Supervisors will make up to $19/hr. Hundreds of part-time and full-time positions will become available throughout the state. It will be a great opportunity to earn good, quick and relatively easy money during these hard economic times.

Applicants must be at least 18 years old and present valid forms of ID: passport, permanent resident card, driver's license, social security card, etc., and pass a 30-minute basic skills test. Bilingual speakers are encouraged to apply. Call 401-228-0920 during normal business hours for information.

After weeks (or was it months?) of agonizing over color palettes, types
of seating, laptop tables vs. laptop desks, when the delivery van would
show up, and just exactly what Sebastian meant by "comfortable but not
really comfortable," Liz and I unveiled the new Half Moon Seminar
Room (on the 3rd floor of 1392 Westminster) on Tuesday morning.

Before…

After!

The official christening will take place
during staff meeting on Friday, with sparkling apple juice that's
exactly the same color as the couch, just in case. My hands are scraped
up from helping assemble 12 chairs and a couch in about 4 total hours,
but I've felt amply repaid by all the oohs and aahs as staff members
have wandered in to admire. The atmosphere is open and calm, serious,
with a little taste of the jaunty to keep us from being TOO straight
ahead. Kind of like CMW?? Come by and visit–and make sure Liz or I
are around to hear the oohs and aahs….

-Chloe Kline, CMW staff

We had an awesome "Media Lab Open Hours" session on Saturday. Henry
(from Brown) and Matthew (from RISD) came to help. Paul and Josh worked
on a piece together. Kirby got help from me with Photoshop and from
Henry processing recordings of interviews. Karl (Paul's brother) came
because Paul was there and made a piece that he worked on with
incredible focus for almost two hours. Luis tried Logic for the first
time. David worked on a piece that included a little video action, and
Alanna merged her first Media Lab project (that she made with Angie)
with audio she recorded during class last week. Henry, Matthew, and I
were consistently occupied helping student with their work. It was very
busy and exciting, and gives me a lot to think about regarding moving
forward after this class is over.

The other cool part of the day was that Phase III used the upstairs
space to rehearse after Open Hours ended. Because Open Hours and the
rehearsal were one after the other, Luis started preparing for the
rehearsal a little early (warming up on his violin), which led to Josh
and Paul leaving their computer to grab a recorder to see if they could
get Luis to record something for the piece they were making. Karl
finished working on the computer a little before the rehearsal was
over, so he hung out in the main space and listened to Phase III. I
also learned that in this rehearsal, Phase III made use of several of
the practicing techniques they had learned at the Musical Workshop the
day before.



I think the day felt great overall because students seemed comfortable
using the space in a variety of ways. All of this made me wish we were
able to have general "open hours" on Saturdays at CMW, so that students
could come and go, clubhouse-style, using the space in whatever ways
suited them.

-Jori Ketten, Media Lab Director

The CMW Pavement Raiders are currently training for the Providence 5K
road race on Saturday, March 20. We're running to raise funds for the
summer music camp that CMW is planning for July 19-23.

Jesse approaches the finish line (September 2008)

Last year was the first time we offered a summer camp for our students,
and this year we are hoping to combine a full week of musical
programming for thirty kids with plenty of time spent outdoors in
beautiful Wickford, RI. Read about last year's camp here and watch a video of one of the performances on the final day of last
year's camp here.

Interested in sponsoring the 11-member CMW team? Our goal is to raise $2,010. Learn more by visiting our fundraising page: http://www.firstgiving.com/cmw5k

Thanks for helping out!

-Heath Marlow, CMW staff

Eleven years ago, the Emerson String Quartet was auditioning younger
ensembles for a training program at the Hartt School of Music, in
Connecticut. Piles of performance tapes came in, and the Emersons
decided to listen to them while driving between destinations on a
European tour.

One tape, from a young Toronto quartet, juxtaposed the
expected Beethoven with a contemporary Canadian work in which the
players were required to yell at the top of their lungs. The screaming
began just as the Emersons were negotiating a difficult stretch of
Alpine road.

"We'd heard this perfectly good Beethoven, and we were
saying, 'Very nice,' when the screaming started, and we almost lost
control of the car," the violinist Philip Setzer recalled. "We could
all have died right then and there. Of course, we had to meet the crazy
kids who sent in the tape."

Message for Sebastian: According to a recent study that is available at Third Sector New England, sabbaticals for nonprofit leaders can be "a relatively inexpensive but
highly productive capacity-building tool that yields measurable
results."

This study "exposes the myth that an executive sabbatical will be a
chaotic disruption, finding instead that the creative disruption of a
well-planned sabbatical can be productive for the entire leadership of
an organization."

Side effects may include an increase in organizational capacity as staff assume new roles, strengthened governance resulting from planning for the sabbatical, and rejuvenated executive directors with fresh ideas and perspectives. Do not continue for longer than three months without consulting a physician or Liz Hollander.