Each semester I work with fantastic young musicians at Carnegie Mellon University's Preparatory School to create their own original compositions that are inspired by people, places, and art in their community. They've worked with poets, painters, photographers, evolutionary biologists, and historical foundations over the past four semesters.
Below, check out a little documentary that the Hillman Photography Initiative made about their collaboration with the students of CMU Prep:
Below, check out a little documentary that the Hillman Photography Initiative made about their collaboration with the students of CMU Prep:
Spring 2019: Creative Expression collaborates with the BRiTE program
| In a collaboration close to my own heart, this semester our classes worked with BRiTE, a wellness program that serves older adults with memory loss. We offer marimba classes at BRiTE where our older students compose melodies, and I brought those melodies to our younger Creative Expression students to turn into longer compositions. It was a beautiful, cross-generational collaboration of empathy, and all six sections performed their works on the Saturday Light Brigade. Listen below: |  |
| | Fall 2018: Creative Expression collaborates with Mayor Marita GarrettThis fall Creative Expression classes had their first political collaboration with Mayor Marita Garrett of Wilkinsburg! Mayor Garrett generously shared her life's story with our classes, and each class chose a different story to inspire them and create a composition. Students had a huge range of stories to explore. We used Gregorian chant to inspire a piece about the role of Marita's faith. One piece was full of drama, exploring Marita's first political experience -- a stealthily rigged eighth-grade race for social chairperson. Other classes explored Marita's personality -- she's a social butterfly -- and the motto she lives by: "Service is the rent we pay for living on this earth." Our Creative Expression 5 wrote compositions about Marita's relationship with her mother and grandmother, whom she cites as inspirations. (Her mother was her campaign manager when she ran for mayor.) Finally, our Community Engagement class explored Marita's platform of transforming Wilkinsburg's blight. Our classes were featured performers on the Sacred Spaces tour of Wilkinsburg, with Mayor Garrett narrating live. Our first summer classes launched! In the summer of 2018 our classes worked with Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall and the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation to perform for a historical walking tour of the buildings of Henry Hornbostel. Using stories from Hornbostel's life, the students created compositions in just four short class sessions during May and June. Each of our classes used ragtime as an inspiration; Hornbostel designed Soldiers & Sailors in 1907, just as the early style of jazz was growing in popularity. Students incorporated the "ragged" rhythms of ragtime and the technique of the stride piano with their own original ideas as they brought two elements of Hornbostel's life to music. Our first class wrote about his legendary ride from New York City to Niagara Falls on a bicycle with no gears or breaks, and our second class wrote about his fast and inspired way of sketching out the buildings that he designed. |
Our first time on the radio!
In the spring of 2018 five classes of Creative Expression worked with the poetry of Osama Alomar, who is in residence with Pittsburgh's City of Asylum. They created original compositions inspired by his poetry, and then we performed and recorded at the Saturday Light Brigade.
In the spring of 2018 five classes of Creative Expression worked with the poetry of Osama Alomar, who is in residence with Pittsburgh's City of Asylum. They created original compositions inspired by his poetry, and then we performed and recorded at the Saturday Light Brigade.
Listen to their performances:
In the fall of 2018 our classes collaborated with the Homewood Cemetery and the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation. Students created original compositions that were inspired by the lives and works of musicians laid to rest in the cemetery.
In the fall of 2016, our class collaborated with the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation to perform compositions inspired by the stained glass art at the All Saints Church.