Archive for January, 2017

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Madawaska Band

January 26, 2017

Part of the inauguration festivities

The Madawaska Band traveled to Washington, DC to participate in the Presidential Inauguration festivities last week. The band is known as the Pride of Madawaska and this year their director is music educator Benjamin Meiklejohn. This is Ben’s second trip to an inauguration celebration. In 1989 he traveled with the Kennebunk High School band and marched in the inauguration parade for President George H.W. Bush.

screen-shot-2017-01-21-at-9-30-32-amThe northeastern most community in the US, Madawaska businesses and community members rallied to raise more than $24,000 to make the opportunity possible. In addition to their performance which you can see at http://www.wlbz2.com/news/politics/national-politics/pride-of-madawaska-performs-at-trump-s-inaugural-concert/389212417 the 27 band members visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the mall area, and other DC locations. They met with US Representative Bruce Poliquin, US Senators Angus King and Susan Collins.

They proudly represented Madawaska and the state of Maine! To learn more about the background please CLICK HERE for the story from WLBZ2. To see more photos of their experience please CLICK HERE.

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Celebrating Arts Education

January 25, 2017

Excellence in Visual and Performing Arts Education

On December 21 at the Hall of Flags in the State House in Augusta the First Lady Ann LePage, parents and family members, administrators, and officials gathered to recognize student artists and musicians as part of the Excellence in Visual and Performing Arts Education program. Over 90 students were celebrated for their art work or musical contributions.

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Students and the First Lady Ann LePage pose for a photo at the celebration on December 21, 2016

The Maine Arts Commission and the Maine Department of Education, in partnership with the First Lady of Maine, Ann LePage, is proud to recognize arts education programs across the state with rotating student art exhibits.  At the celebration student musicians from the schools represented are invited to bring a performing group as part of the program.

Congratulations to the following schools, teachers, and students who are being represented at this time with an exhibit in place until the end of February throughout the State House complex and the Maine Arts Commission. Please stop by during office hours to view the exhibit.

Lisbon School Department

Lisbon High School

Teacher: Pamela Ouellette

Bailey Butler, Christopher Normand, Kierra Bouchard, Antigone Woodbury, Ciera Miller, Emily Chase, Ivy Morris.

Lisbon Community School

Teacher: Jo Martyn-Fisher

Adelle Anderson, Camden Therrien, Hannah Card, Gracie Guay, Olivia Green, Emmett Mooney, Emma St. Pierre

Philip W. Sugg Middle School

Teacher: Nicholas D’alfonso

Maia Tebbets, Dylan Cox, Serena Serrano, Lacey Cram, Emma Tapley, Laura Mockler, Susan Hart

Dr. Levesque Elementary School and Wisdom Middle/High School

Teacher: Theresa Cerceo

Ellie Cyr, Cody Guerrett, Sam Paradis, Annick Gendreau, Ella Jarett, Nevaeh Barclay, Elijah Hayes, Kamden Daigle, Macie Albert, Katelyn Zetterman, Mavrick Levesque, Logan Pelletier, Ella Voisine,Colleen Thamsen, Layne Murphey, Ethan Hayes

Alex Deschaine, Owen Sirois, Amber Albert, Jasmine Demoranville, Daley Pedersen, Kelly Pelletier Deschaine

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Woolwich Central School

Teacher: Laura Devin

Kara Munsey, Joy Holbrook, Iris Hennin, Ophelia Hibl, Otto Hible, Lillian Pomerleau

Phippsburg Elementary School

Teacher: Rosemary Polizotto

Addison Cearbaugh, Annabelle Gerow, Nathan Trask, Shelby Norman,Josiah Keller, Braylon Williams

Fisher Mitchell Elementary School

Teacher: Ross Berkowitz

Rebekah St. Pierre, Charlie Thelen, Julia Marlowe, Gavin Woodbury, Miread Glover

Bath Middle School

Teacher: Brandon Ward

Alexandria Nickerson, Josh Haycock, Ben Brewer, Helen Bertlesman

We are presently seeking art work for a show scheduled for the 2017-18 school year. In order to have equitable representation we are seeking artwork from the superintendents regions of York, Mid-coast, Western Maine, and Aroostook. Please consider submitting your students’ artwork. The exhibition guidelines are located at https://mainearts.maine.gov/CMSContent/arts_in_education/Excellence_VPA/2015-2016_EVPA_Artwork_Guidelines.pdf. If you are interested in participating, please contact Beth Lambert at 624-6642 or beth.lambert@maine.gov.

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Pecha Kucha

January 24, 2017

January 27

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Rockport Opera House, This Friday, January 27
Doors open at 6:30
Presentations at 7:00
$5 (cash) at the door
Reception to follow.  Food, drink, and PK-chit-chat.

Info can be found at the FB event page:
Pecha Kucha Night Midcoast Maine

PechaKucha Night Midcoast Maine celebrates the creativity of our community through visual storytelling in a unique presentation format where individuals share their work, ideas, and creative process with a 20-second-per-image, 20-image slideshow.

Enjoy stories in the unique PK format from these presenters:
Kim Bernard, artist
Aaron Lincoln, schooner captain
Todd Martin, educator
Erica Moody, metalwork design
Dave Morrison, writer & musician
Alex Rheault, artist
Sarah Rice, photographer
Tom Ulichny, Midcoast Music Academy
Emcee, Mary Bumiller

Thank you to our sponsors!
Event Lead Sponsor:

screen-shot-2017-01-24-at-3-56-40-pmReception Sponsor:

screen-shot-2017-01-24-at-3-56-47-pmMedia Sponsor:

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Letter to Editor

January 24, 2017

Communicating about the Arts

Nancy Harris Frohlich is a retired educator who moved to Maine and settled in the mid-coast. She started LEAPS of IMAGINATION to provide more art making opportunities for elementary students. The LEAPS philosophy: We believe that all children are imaginative thinkers, and that if we give them the opportunity to use their imaginations in school by making art, they will thrive.

screen-shot-2017-01-24-at-6-23-12-amLEAPS of IMAGINATION brings local Maine mentor artists together with elementary school students and teachers in a collaborative school-day classroom program. Mentor artists interweave in-depth art making experiences with carefully chosen social justice and literature themes linked to the class curriculum. Our project empowers children to believe in their own capacity to create and to make change in both their local community and the larger world.

I receive emails with these type of questions: “How do I convince people that more funding is needed for art supplies?” and “I want to start an elementary chorus, how do I go about that?” and do I communicate to my administration that we need to increase time for small group lessons?” and “Field trips have been cut from the budget, how can I get my students to an art museum?”

In the fall Nancy wrote a letter to the editor of a local newspaper during arts week. It’s a great example of advocating to educate. This needs to take place at many levels; school-base with administration and teachers of other content and grade levels, district-wide, community/regionally, and beyond. I’ve always believed that our first responsibility is to teach students, and in addition, adults. Since adults are almost always the ones who make the decisions they need to be informed about why the arts are essential.

As you prepare budgets for next year what will you communicate about the needs for a comprehensive arts education? With Youth Art Month and Music in Our Schools Month just around the corner, how will you use the opportunity to communicate and educate your community? I urge you to begin planning your action steps.

Below is Nancy’s letter to the editor. Even though she uses the word “art”, it certainly can apply to music, dance, theater and media arts. Nancy can be reached at nancy@nancyharrisfrohlich.com. A great big thanks to Nancy for the work she continues to do!

Art Makes Kids Smart

Another academic year has begun, and every year invites new opportunities for teaching and learning. As educators, our work is about designing a more powerful and relevant curriculum in a world in which sea change is the norm. Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind and Drive, reminds us that, “The future no longer belongs to people who can reason with computer-like logic, speed, and precision. It belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind.”  We can teach our children to learn differently. Through art.

Art is a vehicle through which children learn to connect their ideas, to be persistent when problems arise, and to work collaboratively with their peers – all skills critical for the future.  Art teaches children to use their imaginations, to bring an idea to fruition, and to believe in themselves – not just in the studio but in the classroom, where kids can apply the skills they learn in art to all academic domains.

Art has a long-standing tradition in schools, and it’s time we start changing the way we think about it, because we now know that art changes minds.

  • Here’s what art can do for children today:
    Art can build thinking mindsets. Art teaches kids to find connections, make inferences, analyze, and pull their ideas together into a new and inventive whole.
  • Art cultivates student passions, motivating them to think big.
    Art immerses kids in real-world challenges.  When kids are focused on critical issues in today’s world, art gives them an avenue through which to articulate their perspectives.
  • Art teaches children to collaborate. Shared projects and shared thinking open up opportunities for critical skills like negotiation and consensus building.
  • Art invites presentations, critique, and feedback. When kids bring their work to an audience they learn to articulate their ideas and listen to what others have to say about them.
  • Art develops risk taking behaviors in a safe and creative context. If children are going to play a positive role in their world, they have to know what it feels like to bounce back from mistakes and disappointment and to take the risk to think big for everyone’s future.
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MAEA Exhibit

January 23, 2017

Opening Saturday USM

The Maine Art Education Association members exhibition – Portals – opens Saturday, January 28, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m., University of Southern Maine Art Gallery, Gorham. Exhibit will remain until March 3, 2017.

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MAMM Opportunity

January 22, 2017

High School Rock Off

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Registration Opens for the 2017 MAMM SLAM!

The Maine Academy of Modern Music (MAMM) is thrilled to announce that the registration period is now open for the 2017 MAMM SLAM: Maine’s High School Rock Off.

The MAMM SLAM is a statewide competition designed to provide young, career-minded musicians with an educational platform through which to gain performance and business experience, professional acumen, industry exposure, and promotional and career networking opportunities.

The competition is open to bands AND solo artists and students may register online at http://www.mainetoday.com/mammslam by March 10th.  The Preliminary Round will be held on April 8th at Bayside Bowl and the Finals will be held at Empire on May 13th.

During the Preliminary round, professionals in the local club, radio, print media and recording studio industries will serve as judges for the competition. The panel of judges will select five bands to participate in the Finals. In addition to the five bands selected by the panel of judges, the general public will be invited to participate in the event by voting for their favorite band in an online poll on the MaineToday web site.   One “wild card” band, chosen through this poll, will proceed to the Finals along with the five selected by the judges.

Winners have a crack at a pretty extensive prize package that includes:

  • $1000 cash sponsored by the Rusty Rocket Music Fund
  • College scholarships to the Maine College of Art (MECA) of up to $16,000 per year to each member of the winning band
  • A tour of Gateway Mastering in Portland
  • Free recording studio time
  • Plum gigs, including an appearances on the MAMM Stage at the 2017 Old Port Festival and the All Roads Music Festival.
  • Radio appearances and more!

The MAMM SLAM is generously sponsored by MaineToday.com, Coffee By Design, State Theatre, Crooked Cove, Gateway Mastering, Rusty Rocket Music Fund, Bayside Bowl, and Empire, with support from WCYY, WBLM, Maine Magazine and WPXT-TV.

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National Art Education Conference

January 21, 2017

New York City

For more information and to register to attend the National Art Education Conference in New York City on March 2-4 please CLICK HERE.

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Hampden Academy Music

January 20, 2017

Hampden Academy students ‘Play it Forward”

Ingrid Jensen

Ingrid Jensen

Music educator Pat Michaud from Hampden Academy sent me the latest news from the work going on at Hampden Academy. They are busy preparing for a concert and CD release that will benefit one of their own. Read about the work they are doing by CLICKING HERE.

On January 17-19 Ingrid Jensen will in residency at part of the Jazz Residency Initiative with Hampden Academy Jazz Students. She will also be performing with musicians, Dave Wells on Tenor Sax, Ryan Parker on Piano, Les Harris, Jr on Drums and Greg Loughman on Bass.

Ingrid will be presenting two Master Classes. On Tuesday, January 17th from 4:30 – 6 p.m. – Developing Deeper Listening Skills that will lead to more exciting improv. experiences. On Wednesday, January 18th from 12:30 – 2:00 p.m – Brass Master Class

The Capstone Concert will be on Thursday, January 19 at 7 p.m.

All workshops and performance are to be held in the Hampden Academy Performing Arts Center.

Workshops are free of charge.  Tickets will be available at the door for the concert.

Information on Ingrid Jensen: Ingrid plays trumpet and flugelhorn with all the brilliance and fire of a true virtuoso, following the spirit of the muse as she creates…warm, sensitive, exciting and totally honest…” ~ Marian McPartland
Born in Vancouver and raised in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Ingrid Jensen has been hailed as one of the most gifted trumpeters of her generation. After graduating from Berklee College of Music in 1989, she recorded three highly acclaimed CDs for the ENJA record label, soon becoming one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the global jazz scene. After a teaching stint in Europe in her early twenties (as the youngest professor in the history of the Bruckner Conservatory in Linz, Austria), Ingrid settled in New York City in the mid-1990s where she joined the innovative jazz orchestras of Maria Schneider and Darcy James Argue.
More recently, Ingrid has been performing with the Grammy- winning Terri-Lyne Carrington and her Mosaic Project. Ingrid is a featured soloist on the Christine Jensen Jazz Orchestra’s JUNO award winning album Treelines (2011), and its successor, Habitat (2013). She has performed with a multi-generational cast of jazz legends ranging from Clark Terry to Esperanza Spalding. Ingrid has also performed alongside British R&B artist Corrine Bailey Rae on Saturday Night Live and recorded with Canadian pop icon Sarah McLachlan. In addition to her busy sideman and featured soloist schedule, Ingrid leads her own quintet, quartet and organ trio. Her own bands have garnered glowing reviews and a loyal fan base in Australia, South Africa, most countries in Europe, across Canada, the US, South America (including Brazil, Peru and Chile), Japan and Mexico.
Ingrid is also a dedicated jazz educator. She has taught trumpet at the University of Michigan and Peabody Conservatory, performed and lectured as a guest artist with the Thelonious Monk Institute High School group featuring Herbie Hancock, The Centrum Jazz Workshop, The Dave Brubeck Institute, the Banff Centre Workshop in Jazz & Creative Music, Geri Allen’s All-Female Jazz Residency and the Stanford Jazz Camp, to name a few.
Ingrid won the Carmine Caruso Trumpet Competition in 1991 and has twice served on the judges’ panel. She is regularly invited to trumpet festivals around the world, including a prestigious invitation in 2011 to work with classical trumpet maestro Håkan Hardenberger and the Swedish Wind Orchestra.
Ingrid plays a custom Monette trumpet, built personally by master builder Dave Monette. Her relationship with Dave has inspired numerous performances at the shop in Portland and generated collaborations with fellow Monette artist, Adam Rapa, as well as John Henes, a specialist in the Alexander technique for brass players.
One of Ingrid’s most frequent and closest collaborators is her sister, saxophonist and composer Christine Jensen. In addition to Christine’s Jazz Orchestra, they co-lead the group Nordic Connect with pianist Maggi Olin. Ingrid and Christine recently recorded a new album with their small group venture featuring guitarist Ben Monder and are eagerly anticipating the spring release.
Ingrid’s most recent release, an electric project (Kind of New) with keyboardist Jason Miles, has garnered rave reviews globally and has led to recent collaborations with Joe Lovano and Lionel Loueke.
Other projects Ingrid has been invited to lend her voice to include: David’s Angels (Sweden), Kari Ikonen (Finland), Marianne Trudel (Montreal), Ellen Rowe (USA), Adam Birnbaum (USA), Sharel Cassity (USA), Tobias Meinhart (Germany/US), numerous all- star groups including a recent European tour with Renee Rosnes, Terri-Lyne Carrington, Anat Cohen, Linda Oh and Melissa Aldana.

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In Today’s News

January 19, 2017

Suggested eliminations

Proposed cuts in funding has potential of impacting arts education programs. Read about this in the report in The Hill.

And, more reading on the topic in The Washington Post.

 

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Virtual Roundtable Meeting

January 19, 2017

Maine Art Education Association – TODAY

r-s-v-p-meHow do you use Technology? To engage? Deliver instruction? For Assessment? Not at all? Join R.S.V.P. ME online 3:30 to 5:00 TODAY Thursday, January 19th to share the ways you use technology in your art program.

This virtual meeting will be a roundtable discussion on the strategies that you find useful – or not! – when applying technology in your classroom. Charlie Johnson from MDI High School will also share a report out from a recent NAEA webinar “Best Practices in Art Education Technology.”

If interested please sign up to participate in this Zoom Online Video Conference by emailing Lisa Ingraham at lisa.ingraham@msad59.org. Once you email Lisa she will send you the Zoom link to participate.