Tags archives: music education
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5 years ago
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Musician Billy Martin Shares Creative Ideas with Students
I had the great pleasure and fortune for the second year in a row to host and to teach at the Art for Progress Summer Music and Art Program. The program was made possible by a grant from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, and was open to young people seeking to pursue careers in creative fields. Music and art were made, and a great and enlightening time was had by all this summer. The program consisted of workshops held on four consecutive Sundays in July and August. For each week’s session, we created a unique, interactive space where creativity seemed to be seeping from the walls. Curiosity was inspired and mysteries demystified. Each week featured a professional guest artist in a different creative discipline. Our guest artists shared with us the experiences they each encountered on their journey toward becoming a fully realized professional artist.
Jerrell Battle teaching Ableton while students interact
The focus of the of the program, in addition to developing specific skills, was once again centered on questions and situations that a professional artist might encounter. The kind, for instance, that might not be intuitive or often addressed in traditional academic settings. Basically, the stuff they don't tell you in school. We discussed finding your audience, vetting creative ideas, being band-mates as well as friends, and checking your attitude. There were also break out music sessions on topics i[...]
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6 years ago
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This summer, thanks to a grant from the Matisse Foundation, I had the great pleasure of teaching the music portion of the Art for Progress Summer Arts & Music Program for high school students and young adults interested in pursuing creative careers. Consisting of series of four workshops held on Sunday mornings during July and August at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center, the program was designed to explore the many real-world considerations inherent to careers in the arts and music. The focus was to look at some of the dynamics at play in the music and art worlds, and to provide support in the development of specific skills in the various media. Each week, a professional working in the arts was invited as a guest speaker and to host a short discussion. The speakers were happy to answer questions and were very informative and animated as they enlightened the group about the day-to-day life of a working artist. Everyone seemed to have a great time and to get a better sense of how to approach their work professionally going forward. On a personal note…I had the fantastic opportunity to study visual art in Paris while in college, and later jazz theory and improvisation, so it was auspicious to me to be able to work with the foundation representing French painter Henri Matisse, a personal favorite and early influence. Matisse was known to love American jazz music, and that added to my special sense of personal investment in this project. We at AFP are[...]
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6 years ago
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Humanities Preparatory Academy, our flagship music education program, suffered a budget cut of $130,000 this year. As a result, they have to eliminate half of the music classes AFP has been providing for the past 6 years. The school is located in Chelsea, but it’s mostly attended by students from under-served communities in Harlem and the Lower East Side. AFP’s music program is the only music program at the school. With each year, there are more students that want to take music classes than we can accommodate.
As we've seen time and again, music and art classes are the first to go when cuts like this happen. Our goal is to raise $10,000 to supplement the budget and fund the program for the upcoming school year. If we can raise the necessary funds, we can continue to serve as many kids as possible and maintain the vital music and arts presence that has become a signature of the school's culture. Our mission is to provide creative arts programs for all New York City public school students. Every child should have the opportunity to learn creative skills and problem solving.
Please make a donation right now to help us fulfill our mission. We have some exciting gifts that we're offering to exceptional contributors as an added incentive, including artwork and private music performances and lessons. Thank you in advance for your help!
Please watch this short video from AFP's Director, Frank Jackson and Educator, Barry Komitor.
Take a look at the suggested donation le[...]
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6 years ago
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So many exciting things have been going on in the world of Art for Progress’ Arts and Music Education Program. We have been helping young people throughout the city to cultivate their artistic expression and proudly watching that effort bear fruit. Our continuing school and after school programs provide opportunities for students to learn skills and form friendships and alliances while our community efforts give those students and others real life experience through performing, showing work, and recording music. We are honored to have received two grants this spring, as well, which will help our ongoing mission to make sure arts stay in public schools despite consistent budget cuts.
This has been a landmark year for Art for Progress’ Arts and Music Education Programs. Our music programs at Humanities Preparatory Academy, The James Baldwin School, and Hudson High School for Learning Technologies have been developing astonishing talent; and our visual arts programs at Forsyth Satellite Academy and Essex Street Academy continue to expose students to new perspectives on fine arts and design.
We’re especially proud of the work we’ve done developing the bands in the AFP Young Adult Music Enrichment and Recording Program. Statik Vision is now a staple on the NYC rmusic scene, and their album release was featured in a photo essay in the New York Times’ Lens section showcasing the Bronx punk art scene. Big Sweater and Bad Faces got to play alongside musical heavyweights Nels[...]
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8 years ago
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With an unprecedented climate of change and concern dawning in the United States, Art for Progress arts education programs are more essential than ever. AFP is embracing the ever-growing need for alternative and supplemental art, music, theater, and fashion programs for young people representing the voice of true expression in our city. Once again this has been an exciting semester for existing Art for Progress arts education programs in New York City’s public schools, and there are some new programs in the works for the second half of the school year.
Our flagship music program at Humanities Preparatory Academy, which includes school day sessions as well as after school, is flourishing and has produced and cultivated a bunch of wonderful talent this semester. Everyone at the school is looking forward to the talent show on February 16th, which will include solo vocal and instrumental performances, and a variety of ensemble pieces and even a dance number. AFP’s after school program at the James Baldwin School is also going strong and was well represented in the recent school-wide talent show on Friday, January 20. Students from both schools have been working hard after school every day, choosing songs and rehearsing. Especially impressive is the spirit of mutual encouragement among the students as the shows approach.
As for AFP’s Young Adult Music Enrichment Program, tracking is nearly completed on Bronx rock band Statik Vision’s full-length album, and we are preparing [...]
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9 years ago
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Art for Progress’ after school music enrichment program at Hudson High School for Learning Technologies was especially inspiring this spring semester because of a dynamic group of multi-talented, and eager students. The program was reinstated this spring thanks to the efforts of principal Nancy Amling. The program had been inactive for the fall semester because a lack of funding, Ms. Amling was influenced in her decision to restart the program by an exceptional young student and musician named Terelle. Terelle’s enthusiasm and hunger for new knowledge were the ultimate catalyst for the formation of the program.
Tarelle wanted to learn about how music works beyond the shapes he was learning on the guitar. Hudson HS currently offers a beginning guitar class as a part of the school’s regular curriculum. The class is focused on the mechanics of playing the instrument, but like most beginning guitar classes, it did not address the underlying music theory necessary for students who to build their skills beyond the basic guitar vocabulary.
The group of students that comprise the AFP after school program at Hudson range from 9th-12th graders, and are led by Terelle. He expressed a desire to learn some more universal musical concepts in order to set up a foundation upon which to develop their musicality. They were made up of aspiring singers, guitarists, pianists, and bass players of varying levels of experience. We explored the construction of scales, chord building and common[...]
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9 years ago
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The Art for Progress music program at Humanities Preparatory Academy, now in it’s fourth school year, is the flagship of AFP’s arts education programs. Instituted in the Fall of 2012, the program serves two classes of 12-18 students four days per week, with each day’s lunch period serving as an additional class period enabling students to seek further instruction or individual practice time. The class is open to students of all high school years (9-12) allowing a rare occasion for teens of different ages to interact on a level playing field in a collaborative setting.
There are also two after school sessions per week, which give students an opportunity to either practice alone, or to join in group music-making, which is the ultimate intention of all AFP music programming. Faculty also participate, further enriching the overall experience of the students, and the teachers learn just as much as the kids!
The goal of the program is for every student to be able to play at least one complete song. Toward this goal, all students learn the basic mechanics of music in general, and to develop proficiency on least one instrument. Although much of the class time is spent building and developing skills, the focus of the program is ultimately on giving students the tools to express themselves.
The semester begins with discussions about students’ musical interests and experiences, with everyone having an opportunity to choose a song by an artist or group that they like to share wi[...]
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9 years ago
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The turkey has been eaten, the in-laws have left, the traffic has settled and the flurry of the Thanksgiving has finally subsided. We were meant, during the holiday, to reflect and give thanks for all that we have in our lives, but those sentiments sometimes get lost in the craze surrounding Black Friday/Small Business Saturday/Cyber Monday. We forget the “giving” part of Thanksgiving. To counteract this, “Giving Tuesday” was launched by organizations like 92nd Street Y, the United Nations Foundation, the website Mashable and the brand (RED). The day is meant to remind us to pause our consuming (figuratively. you can keep working on those leftovers if you want) and give back this holiday season. Here are five charitable organizations, both for the music and by the music, that you could give to this Tuesday:
Dear Jack Foundation
The Dear Jack Foundation (DJF) was founded by Andrew McMahon of Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness. While on tour with his first band, Something Corporate, McMahon was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL). After undergoing treatment, he resolved to ‘initiate change and provide a voice for the generations of young adults who have been diagnosed with cancer.” With the specific aim of helping adolescents and young adults (AYA), DJF aims to support organizations, ‘which recognize the unique challenges the AYA community faces, during and post-treatment.” The programs that have benefited from DJF include the UCLA stem cell transplant progr[...]
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10 years ago
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Teaching beat making and digital music production is always as much of a learning experience for me as it is an opportunity to share my techniques and skills with my students. This semester at the James Baldwin School, I have been working with a great group of kids with a very eclectic set of sensibilities. Some already have experience using Fruity Loops, FL Studio, Ableton or other production software on their laptops and tablets at home to make beats or tracks. Some are completely new to the process music making. Still others have experience playing traditional analog instruments, and are interested in expanding their musical palettes. The key guiding principle for me as I work to guide each student toward their own personal music making goals is to instill in them an ethic of making music from intention. By this I don't mean that that they need to decide in advance what their music means, or what experience the end listener will eventually have; although that is another, very interesting conversation. I simply mean that I encourage them to develop the skill of hearing the music in their heads, and having a vision of the ultimate result before setting ideas down. This is especially challenging at the present moment, because many production tools, and especially software based production methods enable us to bypass that step by using pre-existing loops and samples, and automatically time syncing them. Some even put them in tune with one another. While this allows for a n[...]
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10 years ago
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https://vimeo.com/124425796
I am sometimes asked to describe my music teaching methodology. Having done this frequently, I have distilled my basic philosophy to a few key themes, which accentuate the contrast between how I approach music education with Art for Progress, and how music is traditionally taught in public schools. There are clear differences in goals, in repertoire, and in what information is considered important to convey.
First, the goals are different at their essence. Traditional music instruction involves learning the mechanics of an instrument and the written language of music notation in order to reproduce pieces of music that have earned their place in the vocabulary of music educators, often, though not always, centuries or decades ago. There is little explanation of the relationships between the elements of music, or consideration of building skills toward creating original music. Traditionally trained players are often discouraged from improvising, and develop an aversion to it and even a fear of hitting wrong notes if they dare explore uncharted territory.
On the other hand, many untrained musicians, often referred to as self-taught, are undeterred by the pitfalls of exploration because they know it to be the path toward discovery. These include many folk, blues, rock, reggae, indie, pop and hip-hop musicians. Rather than learning music note for note from transcriptions, they develop a modular understanding of chords, scales, and riffs, which [...]
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10 years ago
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The greatest reward a teacher can receive from his students is that they exceed his expectations and do work that is inspired, inspiring, and truly reverses the student/teacher dynamic by teaching the teacher something new. I am exceptionally fortunate to have had that experience many times over as a teaching artist for Art for Progress. Two examples that stand out in my mind are: the band Statik Vision and Humanities Prep junior and chanteuse April T.
The members of Statik Vision have been studying with me for almost four years, beginning while I was at Bronxdale High in the Bronx. When I left Bronxdale and came to Humanities Prep in Chelsea, it was important to me and to AFP to continue to provide opportunities for learning to former AFP program participants who wanted to further develop their musical education. Jason McFarlane and Ramond Moreta were students in the same building as Bronxdale (Christopher Columbus HS Campus) who gravitated to the Bronxdale after school program when principal John Chase asked that the program be made open to the entire campus. Upon setting up shop at Humanities Prep the following year, I invited them and a number of other former AFP students to make the trek to Manhattan to attend sessions after-after school. They began to come regularly, and to bring friends who were both talented and eager to learn, and formed a band, T-10. I helped coach the band’s rehearsals, while also allotting time to give lessons in guitar and bass technique, jazz[...]
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12 years ago
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On Tuesday March 12, the AFP music program at Humanities Preparatory Academy was fortunate to host Jeremy Danneman of ParadeOfOne for a special multimedia presentation to students. Mr. Danneman is a truly unique artist with a poignant social message that made a palpable impact on the students and their perspective on art, music and world events. The presentation involved showing students slides, playing both live and recorded music, and discussing his experiences having visited Rwanda and Cambodia, two countries that have been recently ravaged by genocide. He shared stories about and recordings of musicians he was fortunate to encounter in these locales, and collaborations he performed with them, despite having possessed no other means of communication with them save for an interpreter. His enthusiastic explanations of his motives for doing this type of work and colorful retelling of his experiences illustrated beautifully the potency of music and arts to bridge social divides, and to introduce a new, living meaning to cultural exchange and painful, but important world events. The presentations culminated with live performances by Mr. Danneman on saxophone and clarinet, and in one case included myself playing guitar in an impromptu musical improvisation that tied together the power of all the skills that students have been learning in class for the past semester. AFP would like to thank Mr. Danneman for visiting our classes, and look forward to hosting him again soon along wi[...]
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