Musical Storytelling is a program I've created that merges music with telling the stories of people and communities. It manifests as workshops that inspire a community to tell their story through music, workshops that mix memoir with music, and education programs that inspire young people to use interdisciplinary thinking to tell their stories and the story of their communities. 

Musical Storytelling Composition Workshops 

Musical Storytelling Composition Workshops allow people to create musical pieces as a group, using me and other musicians as their "jukebox." No musical experience is needed! We start by choosing a mood, and then share information about each element of music as we demonstrate different options and the audience chooses the right harmonic progression, melodies, and rhythms for their piece. At the end of these workshops -- which can vary from a quick 15-minute demonstration to an hour-long workshop -- participants will have learned about all of the building blocks of music and have created an original work! 

I first implemented these workshops in Boston's homeless shelters in a collaboration with Shelter Music Boston. We visited six different shelters and composed an original work with shelter guests at each location. The project, funded by the Boston Foundation, then went to composers who created chamber pieces inspired by these musical ideas. We returned to the shelters to perform these works in August of 2018; read the Boston Globe's article about us! We also shared the Musical Storytelling process with our community audience at a benefit in October of 2018, and the audience created an original, collaborative setting of the words of a shelter guest to music. (Video of that process above.) 

Musical Storytelling Memoir Workshops

Musical Storytelling Memoir Workshops ​are one-on-one experiences where participants craft a meaningful story from their life and work with me or another professional musician to set their story to music. 

No writing or music experience is needed to participate in these workshops; I provide approachable prompts to help participants brainstorm the stories of their life and choose the one they want to write about. We will work together to find the right musical piece to accompany the writing, and participants get to make musical decisions to help the piece fit with their story. The workshops end with a recording session. 

I began these workshops when in an artistic residency with the Hillman Cancer Center. With my marimba in tow, I worked with patients and their caregivers to write stories from their lives and set them, live, to music.

 I have since started working with musicians of Resonance Works to spread this work across Pittsburgh; listen to a session done by pianist Uliana Kozhevnikova with pastor William Glaze of Homewood. ​

Musical Storytelling Education Programs

Musical Storytelling Education Programs are tailored with each school to meet their students where they are and help them express themselves through music and storytelling. 

I've created courses in Creative Expression and Community Engagement for Carnegie Mellon University's Music Preparatory School. These talented teen musicians work together to create group compositions that are inspired by their community. Read about past collaborations here, and watch the below documentary to see an example of their collaboration with the Hillman Photography Initiative: 
In 2008 I created Telling Stories, an interdisciplinary program at the Denver School of the Arts. Telling Stories is a unique interdisciplinary program that is designed to inspire students to both collaborate across disciplines and create original work. The process helps students learn to speak each others’ languages, inspires faculty members to work together in new ways, and gives non-performing artists a chance to take the stage with their performing colleagues. ​We've had up to 200 students participate each year. Below is a short introduction I gave to the program: 
Each year our show has a theme; here is a piece from the students when the theme was "Negative Space." Their piece is called – It, and it’s a very powerful work with video, musicians playing both their own instruments and instruments they’ve never played before, and beautiful writing.
I also created workshops for The Neighborhood Academy, where students write original poems and then create musical compositions to accompany them. The Neighborhood Academy seeks to break the cycle of generational poverty by preparing low-income youth for college. 75% of students have a household income of $25,000 or less. Students go to school for a 12-hour day and 100% of students go on to college. Many of the students haven't had the opportunity to receive music lessons or take creative writing workshops before they took this class. 

You can listen to the students on a live radio taping at the Saturday Light Brigade, and also hear all of their recordings here on Soundcloud.