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KENNEDY CENTER PRESIDENT TO TAKE ARTS MANAGEMENT PROGRAM TO UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND IN 2014
11/20/13

by Brett Zongker, Daily Journal

WASHINGTON — An arts management training program at the Kennedy Center that's funded by one of the center's largest donations will move to the University of Maryland next year, along with the center's outgoing chief executive, the two institutions announced Wednesday.

Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser tells The Associated Press he plans to join the university as a professor and will leave the arts center four months earlier than his contract was set to end. Kaiser will lead the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at Maryland's flagship university in College Park, and he hopes to launch a master's degree program in arts management.

Kaiser had planned to step down as Kennedy Center president at the end of 2014 and remain at the center to lead the arts management program through 2017.

"It became clear to us ... that we really wanted to grow this institute faster," Kaiser said. "There were certain resources we would need — for example the access to the kinds of faculty you would have at a university."

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THE PETRUSHKA PROJECT: FROM UNIVERITY OF MARYLAND TO MANHATTAN
6/27/13

By Anne Midgette, Washington Post

So let’s talk Stravinsky. Heard anything about Stravinsky lately? The centennial of “The Rite of Spring” this year seems to me to have occasioned more tributes, spin-offs, and homages than I can remember seeing since the last Mozart year (2006) and Bach year (2000). Forget Verdi, forget Wagner (both of whom are having bicentennials this year); we’ve seized on “Rite” as a watershed moment in the development of contemporary music, and it’s being feted as the gateway to modernity around the world. (I may have been reactionary in pointing out in the Washington Post some weeks ago that Diaghilev, who commissioned the piece, was in the business of creating commercial as well as artistic successes.)

The New York Philharmonic got its “Rite” stuff in at the start of this season. Tonight, it’s closing out the season with another look at Stravinsky ballets called “A Dancer’s Dream”: a multimedia puppet-choreography-video production of “The Fairy’s Kiss” and “Petrushka,” overseen by director Doug Fitch, known to Philharmonic audiences for “Le Grand Macabre” and “The Cunning Little Vixen” in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

What the website doesn’t tell you, though, is that this “Petrushka” originated at the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra in 2008, where Fitch was an artist in residence. (The Philharmonic does credit James Ross, UMD’s director of orchestral activities, as the “music consultant.”)

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CIVIL WAR ANNIVERSARY SPURS ARTISTIC COLLABORATION
2/27/13

By Nelson Pressley, The Washington Post

An ambitious National Civil War Project will be unveiled Thursday at Arena Stage as major universities and flagship theaters in four cities team up to create new performances and campus programming.

The partnerships represent a “radical collaboration,” says Arena artistic director Molly Smith. Arena is working with George Washington University. The announcement is scheduled to include “artistic demonstrations” of the kinds of theater, dance, music and scholarship likely to emerge from this large-scale initiative...

Baltimore’s Centerstage and the University of Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, a pod that has already initiated a notably big project. The Kronos Quartet has been commissioned for a piece composed by jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard; the performance will involve a 500-voice choir and spoken word by 2011 National Book Award winner Nikky Finney. The result, “At War With Ourselves,” will be performed at a historically significant site.

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THE PRACTICAL EFFECT OF MAKING ARTS EDUCATION A NATIONAL PRIORITY
1/28/13

By Tom Jacobs, Pacific Standard

Back in the 1990s, advocates for arts education were thrilled by the final wording of the “Goals 2000: Educate America Act.” According to those federal education guidelines, which were signed into law in 1994, fourth, eighth and 12th-graders were expected to demonstrate “competency over challenging subject matter” in a variety of fields, including—for the first time—the arts.

Newly published research reveals that their inclusion had more than just symbolic value. In many schools, elevating the arts to core-subject status made a real difference.

Kenneth Elpus of the University of Maryland reports that Goals 2000 did not significantly increase the number of unique music courses offered in American high schools. However, he writes in the Arts Education Policy Review, “high schools were more likely in the post-Goals 2000 era to require arts course for graduation, and to increase the number of courses needed to satisfy these requirements.”

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AMPED TO SUCCEED

Area students explore music technology and career opportunities at the School of Music FAME summer camp. 

By Kelsi Loos, Office of Communications

A roomful of young students tap on samplers and edit keyboard melodies on software they just learned how to use. A few sing softly into microphones.  A teacher walks around, answering questions. It should be chaotic, but it isn’t. Everyone is focused and completely absorbed by their projects. This is the FAME Music Technology Program.      

The program gives area students grades 8 through 12 a chance to explore cutting edge recording software and music composition. Even more importantly, said Toni Lewis of the Foundation for the Advancement of Music and Education (FAME), it gives students a glimpse of educational and career opportunities in music and prepares them to take advantage of those opportunities.

With funding from the United Way and The Community Foundation for Prince George’s County, FAME, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting music education to youth, offers the program free of charge and provides lunch.

The two-week summer camp was founded last year when School of Music graduate Mike Maddox suggested that Professor Bill Evans collaborate with FAME .

Maddox and Evans had worked together teaching at Sherwood High School and Maddox knew that Evans was already planning a music camp of his own.  

They joined forces with FAME and started building a curriculum while FAME began contacting area schools for student nominations.

The course was based on Evans’ MUSC463 “Applications of Music Technology” class which teaches students to use the recording software Pro Tools, Sibelius and Garage Band. Students also learn songwriting skills, music theory and how to share and promote their music online.

Students can record in the piano lab or jazz ensemble room and edit their compositions in the computer lab. For most of the students, it was their first chance to work in a professional studio.

Evans and Maddox were also sure to include lessons on the music industry as a business.  Composer Robin Hodson from SoundTree, the educational division of Korg, was invited to speak to the students and share his career experiences.

“They’re actually getting a little bit of college curriculum,” Evans said, adding later that it demonstrates to the students, “ok, college is something I could do.”

Destiny Williams, 18, a recent Oxon Hill High School graduate said the program “most definitely” prepared her for a college career in music.

The response from the students and the community has been very positive and the number of students rose from 16 last year to 19 this year and the number of applicants doubled, Lewis said.  The program also expanded from one week to two weeks. FAME hopes to further expand the program to a month-long summer program next year.

“From day one, I was hooked on it,” said David Dixon, 16, a student at Eleanor Roosevelt High School.

To hear student work, please visit soundcloud here or here. 

See a Youtube video promoting the camp.

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