An invitation from Rachel, on behalf of the CMW Pavement Raiders:

On Saturday, March 20th at 11 AM, a CMW team of runners and walkers will take part in the St. Pats 5K in downtown Providence. If
you like to run or walk (it's a distance of just over 3 miles), you're
invited to join us!

CMW Pavement Raiders (September 2008)

Through this event, we are raising funds to help pay for CMW's 2010
Summer Camp. If you can commit to raising more than $25 by asking family
or friends to sponsor your run/walk, Community MusicWorks will reimburse
your $25 race registration fee.

If you're interested, or if you have friends or colleagues who are
interested, please call or email me, and I'll get you all of the
information you need to sign up with our team. We're using the website
Firstgiving.com in order to specifically reach out to friends, colleagues, and relatives
around the country to solicit online donations. Last year, this we raised approximately
$1,650, and we hope to break $2,000 this time.

Check out our special 5K race sponsorship website here:
http://www.firstgiving.com/cmw5k

Looking forward to it — I hope you can join us!

-Rachel Panitch, CMW staff

Editor's note: As of February 8th, five staff members, two board members, and two program parents are already signed up.

More photos by Jori in CMW's Flickr account.

More photos by Jori in CMW's Flickr account.

Photos by Jori in CMW's Flickr account.

At Saturday's free concert at Providence College, CMW raised $769 to support the rebuilding efforts in Jacmel, Haiti. Jesse has a special connection to Jacmel because he spent two weeks teaching and performing in Haiti last summer, including at the Dessaix-Baptiste Music School.

Jesse announced from the stage that, even though Jacmel's music school was damaged and some students' homes were leveled, he had just learned that the orchestra met last week to rehearse for the first time since the earthquake.

-Heath Marlow, CMW staff

From: Jessie Montgomery
To: Phase II & Phase III

To prepare for the Musical Workshop in March and the Youth Salon in April, I have posted the Phase II/III CMW variation of my new piece on myspace so that you
can listen to it freely. I encourage you to listen to it in
order to learn it better, as some parts might LOOK rhythmically
challenging on the page, but I think if you listen, it'll all come
together fine.

Happy New year and good wishes!!

Jessie

Thanks to grants awarded by The Rhode Island Foundation and the Champlin Foundations, Media Lab is a new CMW initiative that will teach students audio and visual media skills in order to:

1. document CMW activities
   
2. reflect on their learning
   
3. 
   create new artistic work

Media Lab is inspired
in part by 08-09 season projects such as the DBR Residency Reflections and Anthem videos, as well as the CMW evaluation led by Dennie Palmer Wolf, and a recent project that I did with RISD students. Participants will
work in small group and one-on-one settings to learn to use still and video
cameras and
audio tools to produce a variety of content for multiple audiences.

1. Interested students will have the opportunity to create new
artistic work, from electronic music to videos, building on CMW supplemental courses like the weekly Music Lab, where students learn to improvise and compose music.

2. Through the addition of Media Lab, all CMW students will accumulate evidence of their learning in electronic "portfolios." Evidence could include recordings of their performances collected over the school year, photographs of their bow holds, short videos they create reflecting
on their own learning, and much more. Here's an example with a Phase I student:

The objective for generating this material is to
help CMW students better understand their growth as musicians as well as to
collect content for portfolios that will help them apply for
competitive opportunities (such as Phase II, Phase III, summer music camps, or college).

3. Several CMW teens interested in documentation can study
photography with me, with the goal of being hired to document PSQ
concerts and eventually be hired outside the organization for
similar work.   

The first semester of Media Lab will begin this month with
an electronic music composition course, which I will co-teach with Brown
University Cogut Fellow Betsey Biggs. I look forward to sharing Media Lab projects with you soon!

The NPR radio program From The Top briefly featured Community MusicWorks in a special Martin Luther King Jr. Day edition of the show recently recorded at the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston.

The "audio postcard" segment about CMW–including interviews with Sebastian, Kirby, and Louis–begins at 17:14. Click here to visit From The Top's audio archive page and then select Show #208.

The CMW Board has awarded Sebastian Ruth, CMW's Founder and Executive-Artistic Director, a three month sabbatical leave, starting on February 1. What is a sabbatical? It is defined as “any extended period of leave from one's customary work, especially for rest, to acquire new skills or training.” Sabbatical comes from the word Sabbath, or the seventh day on which God rested after creating the world. Sebastian has labored for more than 12 years to create, develop, and build CMW into the fabric of Providence’s West Side. We felt it was high time he got a special reward that will give him time to nurture his musical talent, gain some space for reflection, and maybe even get some rest.

CMW’s momentum will not be interrupted by Sebastian’s well-deserved sabbatical. A team of staff are stepping up to provide leadership during the spring semester, including Heath, Minna, Chloe,and Rachel. David Karoff, our fabulous organizational consultant, whose services are being provided as part of a three-year capacity building grant from The Rhode Island Foundation, will be working with this team to learn from their leadership experience. The Board has already become accustomed to having Heath and Rachel at our meetings in the fall as they “learned the ropes” of working with us.

During his sabbatical Sebastian will be spending some time at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta, Canada, a place that "inspires creativity”, as well as in New York City and Boston, studying with special musical advisers such as violinist Barry Shiffman and violist Kim Kashkashian.

Please join us as we send him off with our best wishes for a special time.

-Liz Hollander, CMW Board

At the Performance Party in December, Jesse's violin studio serenaded Sebastian with an inspired new version of Joy to the World…

Joy to the boss,
He needs a break,
From staff, and board, and Heath.

The phone is always ringing,
His emails always bringing,
More stuff for him to do,
All thanks to me and you.
He needs, he needs a silent night.
etc…

(To read the lyrics, click on the image to enlarge.)