Transforming lives one day at a time :: The online journal of Community MusicWorks

Congratulations Jessie Montgomery!

Community MusicWorks is proud to share the news that our good friend and former colleague Jessie Montgomery has been named Sphinx Virtuosi's Inaugural Composer-In-Residence.

                                            photo by Jiyang Chen

An announcement from the Sphinx Organization describes the Sphinx Virtuosi Composer-in-Residence program as an important avenue to engage young composers of color in new commissions and arrangements for the ensemble. 

Jessie Montgomery, former musician in residence at Community MusicWorks, is a Sphinx alumna and violinist of the Catalyst Quartet. This fall, her works will be featured during the 2013 Sphinx Virtuosi Tour, which includes the ensemble’s 10th anniversary concert at Carnegie Hall.

Of this honor, Jessie states, "I am thrilled to be selected as the Inaugural Composer-in-Residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi!  I look forward to the opportunity this position offers me to create new works that will further diversify the palette of contemporary American composition."

Learn more about Jessie Montgomery here, and get more information about the Sphinx Virtuosi Tour (including concert dates and locations) here.

 

"I feel like I'm in another world when I play music."

 

-Quote from Diego, 6, cellist in the Daily Orchestra Program.

Music, Food, Dancing...Free! Join us Friday!

What more could you ask for? Bring a friend and wear your dancing shoes this Friday, May 17 at the John Hope Settlement House!

Video by Jori Ketten.

Join us as we present a World Premiere Afro-Cuban Violin Concerto!

Community MusicWorks is pleased to present the world premiere of Fantasía de Guayaba Habanera, a newly commissioned violin concerto based on Afro-Cuban rhythms and the idiom of Salsa music. This piece, written for violinist Jonathan Gandelsman (of the Silk Road Ensemble and Brooklyn Rider) and the Community MusicWorks Players with their teenage students, represents composer Gonzalo Grau’s own heritage as a person and musician. Grau describes his musical voice as reflecting his upbringing, living in Venezuela and studying classical cello, while also playing and being surrounded by popular Latin music. 

                                   Composer Gonzalo Grau really enjoys Salsa!

For Community MusicWorks, this piece represents an opportunity to address a question we push ourselves to ask, which is ‘how are we in musical conversation with the communities and heritages of the students we serve?’  For sixteen years, CMW has been deeply rooted in the South Side neighborhoods of Providence, Rhode Island, where more than 50% of our student body comes from countries of Latin America. Commissioning this piece of music for students and professional musicians connects our young people’s musical study with the heritages of their families and deepens the ways we are able to make musicianship central to community life.

To support the development of this project CMW has formed a Latino Advisory Committee, comprised of leaders from the Latin American communities of Rhode Island, to promote the concert event in the members’ networks, to build interest in Community MusicWorks, and to support the students’ experience connecting their musicianship with their community.

Important partners in this event include the Rhode Island Latino Arts Network, which will co-host the concert, and Latino Public Radio, which will create a live broadcast of the concert.

The concert will be a community celebration, and will feature dinner catered by a local Bolivian restaurant, the musical performance, and salsa dancing with a live Salsa band.

Here's the effect Fantasía had on the folks lucky enough to hear a preview:

On May 17, this will be you!

Date: Friday, May 17, 2013

Time: 6 PM dinner, 7 PM concert, 8 PM Salsa dancing

Location: John Hope Settlement House, 7 Whitten Way, Providence, RI

For more information: www.communitymusicworks.org , or call: (401) 861-5650

Rare and Unusual...

On Saturday, May 18 from 11 - 12 our CMW Cello students will be performing at the 21st Annual Rare and Unusual Plant Sale at City Farm, 109 Somerset Street in Providence. To learn more about Southside Community Land Trust's Plant Sale and get directions to City Farm: http://www.southsideclt.org/plantsale.

Gather at the Wedding Cake House

Recently Community MusicWorks partnered with Community Works Rhode Island for an ArtPlace event at an abandoned house on the West Side of Providence. The CMW Fellows Quartet played a wonderful Beethoven piece, Salty Labs layered in the unique sound installation and Chris Mulligan provided the fabulous food. Below are photos by Jori Ketten and reactions from the event attendees.

The event on Federal Hill the last week of April, was one of the most interesting, original, creative experiments I have seen at CMW for awhile. On the first floor of a Victorian mansion, the Fellows played in the middle of one big room that had chairs for some of the audience of 40. Across the entryway hall, in another big room, one could also sit and watch the quartet play.

Sebastian Ruth explained that the experiment would enable people to get up from their chairs between movements, very quietly, and spend the next movement strolling in silence in the other 5 downstairs rooms if they so chose. (Others could fill the vacated chairs near the quartet or stay sitting in them.)

I started out sitting in the room across from the quartet, where I could see them,- a familiar and comfortable situation. After the first movement, with a prod from a friend, I got up and began to drift through the other rooms; I could not see the quartet, but I could hear them playing in the distance; in addition, since each of the four instrument-voices was piped into one of the other rooms, you could hear a particular voice distinctly in each room above the sound of the quartet. This was fascinating, pulling out one of the colored threads in a fabric, as it were, so you could concentrate on what it was doing - weaving in and out of the others -as a facet of the whole. A pleasant bonus was being able to munch on delectable nibbles as you strolled or just stood. Some people were glued to the windows, which looked out on various scenes outside the house in the late afternoon light. No one spoke or even whispered.

Several days later I had occasion to hear another live string quartet. As I sat listening, something I have done contentedly for over 60 years, I suddenly realized that I felt a tiny bit constrained in my seat after having had the walkabout exposure a few days before. I realized that the experimental event had broken through a well entrenched and life long paradigm for me of sitting still at a concert.

I may have to go on sitting at concerts mostly, but I think the model is terrific and will undoubtedly flourish as it is further refined, and adapted to new situations.

-Karen Romer

We were thrilled to experience the magic of this event. What was interesting was the difference in how we enjoyed the concert. My husband preferred to situate himself in one or two stationary spots and absorb the music. For me, having the house as a backdrop for music enhanced the experience, adding an emotional layer that became almost like cinema. At one point I found myself sitting in front of the stove and the music became more melancholy, steeped in memory and ghosts.

Nearer to the stairway, I enjoyed the sounds coming from multiple directions, front, back, side. All while gazing at the beautifully carved spindles going up a staircase of peeling paint. Visceral and visual in a way that engaged more of the senses. The musicians and music, as always, were fantastic-but this brought the experience to a whole new level. Brilliant!

-Olivia McCullough and Jon Sharlin

I never go to chamber music recitals because I'm always afraid they will be boring, but this experience completely ignited my interest in learning and hearing more from Community MusicWorks. I was enraptured by the whole acoustic and physical environment -- the music, the ambiance, the delicious food, and warmth of the evening.

-Anya Ventura

A very intimate musical experience-one of a kind. A massage for the soul. I loved it.

-Mary Fasano