We are thrilled to be collaborating with some incredible artists for our January 24-26 season centerpiece together. Composer Russell Pinkston has created to beautiful and moving new works for these shows: AloneTogether and Nobody Tells You. We asked Russell to tell us a bit about the process and a bit about himself.
Austin Classical Guitar: What has this project meant to you so far, has anything surprised you?
Russell Pinkston: It’s truly an honor to be part of this project. I think what ACG has done the past two seasons is wonderful, both artistically and in terms of the underlying concepts. I am sure that “together” will be just as powerful and well-produced and I hope that my little pieces will contribute in some small way. I’m especially looking forward to working with these great musicians!
ACG: What do you wish everyone knew about the process of creating, collaborating on, and sharing new music and new art?
RP: I first got into writing music when I was playing in a “Prog Rock” band in New England, back in the late sixties and early seventies. We had a pretty big following and we played all over the northeast, mostly doing our own music. We lived in a rambling old farm house in Vermont, which had a separate outbuilding where we practiced and worked out our songs and arrangements. For a songwriter/arranger, there’s just nothing quite like the experience of coming up with a new idea, sharing it with your friends/fellow musicians the same day, working out the arrangement collaboratively, and then performing it together onstage – sometimes that very night. And best of all, to be playing your own music for people who know you, have come to hear you, and really appreciate what you’re doing – that’s an amazing experience! Since leaving rock ‘n roll and becoming a “Composer” with a capital “C,” I haven’t had that kind of musical fellowship very often, and I miss it. Writing music for other people to perform is a very different, much more solitary experience. But when I finally get to hear what I’ve written played, especially by such outstanding musicians as I have been privileged to work with over the years, it’s no less of a joyful and satisfying experience. Delayed gratification, if you will! One of the pieces I wrote for this event is called “Alone, Together,” and it’s about the joy of communal music-making, and how it can lift us up when we’re feeling isolated.
ACG: What’s it been like work with this team?
RP: Well, I’ve certainly enjoyed my conversations about the project with Joe and Travis, and I’m looking forward to working with the musicians in the near future. I hope they like what I’ve come up with for them!
ACG: Tell us a little about what else you have going on - how can people learn more about you?
RP: Since retiring from UT after 35 years of teaching there, I’ve been splitting my time between Harpswell, Maine, and Austin. One of my great joys has been starting to study classical guitar (with Joe Williams). I was a self-taught electric blues/rock guitarist back in the day, but I never really knew what I was doing. I’m loving the experience now – practicing a lot, unlearning bad habits and discovering the wonderful literature for this instrument. Playing classical guitar is right up there with sailing these days – at least, when I’m up in Maine! There’s more of my music, for anyone interested (including some of my rock ‘n roll) on my website. Thanks for listening!
If you would like to know more about the inspiration of 'together,' we invite you to read thisarticle by Artistic Director, Joe Williams, and Education Director, Travis Marcum.
Postcards is an Austin Classical Guitar (ACG) and GuitarCurriculum.com series that explores the guitar programs around the nation and strives to bring the guitar teacher community together.
This week’s Postcards is written by Adrian Saenz, guitar director at Americas High School in Socorro ISD* in El Paso, Texas. He is currently in his 16th year of teaching at Americas HS and his 20th year in public education. In the larger guitar community of Texas, Saenz edited and revised the UIL Guitar Prescribed Music List from 2007 to 2016. Saenz also holds a bachelor’s degree in general music from UTEP, a master’s degree in music education from NMSU, and as a guitarist, he studied under Stefan Schyga, Aquiles Valdez, and John Siqueiros.
In this postcard, Adrian Saenz discusses the successes of his guitar program, but he also talks about some of the challenges his program faces due to district policies and changes.
Postcard from Americas High School in El Paso, Texas
By Adrián Sáenz
Hello from El Paso! In this postcard I’d like to share a bit about us, a challenge, and an inspiration.
About us: There are three major school districts in El Paso Region 22 (El Paso ISD, Ysleta ISD, Socorro ISD) and four smaller districts. Within these districts, there are approximately 25 high school guitar programs and a few middle school programs. Americas High School (AHS) is in Socorro ISD.
AHS has seen particular success at UIL Contest. We usually register one of the largest entries at regional UIL Solo and Ensemble Contest, and a lot of our students advance to Texas State Solo and Ensemble Contest (TSSEC). A high percentage of students even receive number 1 ratings at TSSEC.
On an individual student level, AHS Guitar has had 3 outstanding soloists at TSSEC (2012, 2015, and 2016). These outstanding soloist awards were accompanied with offers of full scholarships to continue their studies at various Texas universities, including UTSA and Sam Houston. Many of our guitar students have gone on to study at North Texas and UTEP. Perhaps our biggest accolade is Dario Barrera who received a full scholarship at the Manhattan School of Music in 2018 and is currently studying under Oren Fader.
A challenge: My enrollment has dropped over the last 3 years, so I am rebuilding. One reason is that students are now required to select an endorsement (Graduation Plan) in middle school leading into high school (you can read more about this plan here). Band, orchestra, and choir students in the middle school feeder programs mostly select this endorsement, and the other career paths only allow for 1 year of a fine arts class. Compounding this issue is the lack of middle school guitar programs, meaning students are not seriously studying guitar at the time they are making these important decisions.
Lastly, because Texas has just one fine arts requirement, there are many “one-and-done” students who just need to fulfill the single fine arts credit requirement. So I often have high numbers in the beginner classes with low enrollment in the upper classes.
To counteract this I am advocating for more middle school guitar programs. Currently, I am personally teaching 40 students at a local middle school split across two guitar classes. We also have a phenomenal Mariachi instructor who is teaching four beginner guitar classes in an effort to build up our guitar program. The students in these classes will be able to enter the intermediate guitar class at AHS their freshmen year.
An inspiration: I took a trip, along with the Socorro HS guitar director, to Austin in 2016. The purpose of the trip was to observe the Guitar Concert and Sight-Reading Contest in Austin ISD. We were impressed with the quality of high school and middle school guitar programs from Austin ISD and around the state of Texas that participated at the Austin ISD Guitar Concert and Sight-Reading Contest.
This inspired us to build our own Guitar Concert and Sight-Reading Contest. And In 2017, we were able to implement the Concert and Sight-Reading Evaluation at Socorro ISD. In 2019 all 6 high schools in the Socorro District registered a Varsity and Non-Varsity group for 12 total groups. This was made possible with the help and guidance of Austin Classical Guitar and Edward Grigassy and Susan Rozanc from the Texas Guitar Directors Association.
In conclusion: The Socorro ISD high school guitar programs believe in the importance of advocating for music instruction; to teach the correct methods, techniques, best practices, and music literacy to elevate the status of the guitar. In order to secure the guitar’s future, we must establish guitar programs that are aligned to the national and state music standards to provide guitar students with a high-quality level of instruction. Socorro ISD is committed to elevating the guitar programs through the development of music education, establishing the guitar concert and sight-reading evaluation, and developing performance skills necessary for acceptance to music universities.
Guitar Segment ends at 1:36
And finally, I am excited to work with Dr. Joseph V. Williams II, Artistic Director at Austin Classical Guitar,on their ‘together’ Youth Orchestra Tour in March. Their kids will work with our kids here in El Paso, and make something beautiful for our community.
And that’s it from El Paso for today! If you come to our city, I hope you’ll stop by and see us.
Adrián Sáenz, Guitar Director
Americas High School/Clarke Middle School
*ISD Stands for Independent School District
We’d love to hear about guitar in your part of the world next! Reach out to Jess Griggs anytime with your story and a photo or two.
Postcards is an Austin Classical Guitar (ACG) and GuitarCurriculum.com series that explores the guitar programs around the nation and strives to bring the guitar teacher community together.
In this postcard, Erik discusses the arts renaissance in Cleveland, OH and the work the Cleveland Classical Guitar Society is doing in the community.
Postcard from Cleveland by Erik Mann
An arts renaissance is happening in Cleveland. And the societal impact is incalculable.
Under the Arts Mastery initiative of the Cleveland Foundation, eight organizations are changing the city, one student at a time, in the areas of theater, written and spoken word, photography, curatorial arts, dance, voice, stringed instruments, and classical guitar. The Cleveland Classical Guitar Society is proud to be one of these members.
Out of the 71 largest cities in the U.S., the City of Cleveland has the second highest child poverty rate. This is felt on almost every level of a child’s life, presenting numerous barriers to an equitable life. One huge area of inequality is in the arts. Despite one of the greatest arts scenes in the country, few children in Cleveland have a chance to be engaged in meaningful arts learning, including learning an instrument. That is where CCGS has found the opportunity to change a lot of lives.
Since 2012, Cleveland Classical Guitar Society has been working with schools and neighborhood centers to build classical guitar classes where the need is the highest. In the last few years, the achievement of our students has been so exciting to watch, with a feature nationwide on CBS This Morning, two of our students getting into a fellowship at Cleveland Institute of Music, performances prestigious venues like Severance Hall (home of the Cleveland Orchestra) and Cleveland Museum of Art, acceptance in Interlochen and Brevard summer camps, and much more. Thanks to a recent grant from the Cleveland Foundation, which represents the largest grant in CCGS history, we now have over 550 students in grades 2-12 studying in our program.
Most exciting of all has been the impact on the kids. The Cleveland Foundation recently sponsored a video documenting our program. In it, students and administrators talk about how learning the guitar has increased kids’ confidence, social skills, grades, and attendance; and how our teachers’ mentorship has filled the gap when a parent is missing.
I am so excited for the future of the program. We are moving toward a 5-year goal of increasing the depth of the program while expanding to 1000 students. That means that we are always looking for more teachers with passion and excellence. If that describes you, view our job postings here. And keep using your talents to bring good to the world.
Erik Mann - Executive Director - Cleveland Classical Guitar Society
We’d love to hear about guitar in your part of the world next! Reach out to Jess Griggs anytime with your story and a photo or two.
It has been a truly remarkable year in ACG Education. As you’ll read in this report two of our national partners have hit major milestones in their organizations, proving that mentorship and modeling from ACG combined with time and effort from faraway partners can turn into sustainable programming with wide-ranging positive community benefit. This is extremely encouraging, and will impact our strategy going forward as we actively seek more willing and capable institutional partners.
Another of our most significant developments is the creation of a second daily juvenile justice system program, this time in Williamson County. This new program is going beautifully, students have performed in public three times, and the staff and community are responding with tremendous enthusiasm. This means that the program we started nine years ago in juvenile detention in Travis County is replicable, and we’re already in talks with another county to the south about starting a third program.
In these reports I often focus on program growth and demonstrable change in our systems and resources. It is slightly more difficult to capture the direct impact we’re having on hearts and minds, on individual students, parents and teachers. I have so many stories! So many parents have come up to me at concerts with statements of gratitude, so many teachers around the world send us videos of their students playing music from our curriculum. It can be overwhelming in a good way. As one example, here is an excerpt from a student’s college essay we were invited to share this fall:
Music has been a love of mine since I started in middle school. I have progressed from taking it as an elective, to private lessons, to an Austin-wide youth ensemble…When I play, I feel lost in myself and I have benefited greatly from the transferable skills I’ve learned from my music education thus far. I feel I have a gift, which allows me to live through my life with a purpose.
Sometimes I feel anxious and agitated and am not sure how to manage my emotions…I had an intense period of hardship and needed to get some focused help for a few days. I was in an environment that had other adolescents with all sorts of various hardships regarding mental and emotional health…Instead of staying quiet and removing myself…I actually surprised myself by stepping up to help. I played the guitar they had on hand. I made acquaintances in the short time I was there…When I left, the social workers indicated how proud they were of me, of my openness, and willingness to share my music. To me, that experience demonstrated leadership under difficult circumstances.
We have a guiding question at Austin Classical Guitar: “What good can music do in the world today?” To be sure one of the best answers to that question is to take any steps necessary to ensure as many young people as possible have an opportunity to find joy and satisfaction through music education in their schools. That is the purpose of our work in ACG Education, and that is the subject of this report. There are other answers, however, answers like raising money for charity, reaching people facing profound challenge or isolation, or international cultural exchange to help foster understanding and empathy. If you’re curious about some of the work ACG does in those arenas, I’d like to invite you to take a look at our Top Ten Moments of 2019 that includes glimpses of our other service areas.
Thank you.
If you are reading this report it is because you care. You have given to ACG Education, you believe in the importance of quality music education in young people’s lives, and you have helped make everything we do possible. As a team we have never been more convinced of the gentle power of music to welcome all people, to help individuals build their identities in pro-social ways, and to help nourish the spirit. We are deeply grateful to you, and we hope what you find in this report will make you proud.
Matt Hinsley, Executive Director
Austin Classical Guitar
Central Texas
Our deep partnership with Austin ISD continues. With dozens of schools perhaps our most common challenge is teacher turnover or changes in school structure leading to class disruption or large or unstable class sizes. We have added one new middle school program this fall (O. Henry), are working actively to stabilize personnel in one high school campus currently, and are looking at the prospect of three new middle school programs in fall 2020.
Recent successes include the placement and multi-year intensive support of a teacher at LBJ/LASA, and the addition of two support instructors for growing programs at Lively, Covington, and Akins. Both instructors, incidentally, are former ACG students who are now full-time employees of AISD teaching guitar in ACG programs. You can read more about Mr. Saucedo and Mr. Hernandez in this article about ACG alumni: Where Are They Now?
ACG Education can be summarized as including four main elements: Curriculum, Teacher Training, Special Support Services, and Standards and Systems Building. In this final category, one example is our development of the Austin ISD Concert and Sight Reading Contest (CS&R). This is a standard element of orchestra and band programs, but until we developed the event for Austin ISD six years ago, it did not exist for guitar in the state of Texas. This kind of event is critical when building large education systems as it is the evaluative measure for districts to communicate standards and expectations for all programs. ACG Education staff has run this contest for AISD for six years, continually develops materials and processes, and has also assisted four other districts to develop similar contests around the state. More than 700 students from over 40 ensembles participated in CS&R in spring 2019 (contest results, rules, procedures, and sight reading examples available upon request).
Surrounding Communities: San Marcos High School under the direction of Juan Carlos Cavasos continues to be very impressive. They participated in our 2019 CS&R, and there are plans to expand guitar into the middle school levels in San Marcos soon. Mr. Cavasos also had one student selected for the All Region High School Ensemble in November 2019. Del Valle’s after school for-credit program is run by ACG’s Arnold Yzaguirre, and received straight superior ratings in the 2019 CS&R. Manor’s Decker Middle School program is thriving under the direction of Victor Longoria, and though there has been administrative change in MISD, January will see the reinstatement of elementary programs at both Oak Meadows and Decker Elementary Schools run by ACG alumni Angelica Campbell and Alex Lew. We are in current talks about the expansion of the Dripping Springs High School guitar program as well.
Free Lessons Initiative
ACG Education began in 2001 as an initiative to provide free lessons for low-income students. Our mission quickly expanded to curriculum development and program building, but the free lessons program has continued and expanded. ACG has six teachers: Jeffrey Fratus, Douglas Stefaniak, Tony Mariano, Angelica Campbell, Tom Clippinger and Javier Saucedo providing individual lesson support primarily in Title 1 Schools.
We are particularly proud to report that 8 out of 21 students selected for the All Region High School ensemble in November, are participants in the ACG Free Lesson Initiative.
Some of our most dramatic examples of personal growth and success over the years have come about through these special and intensive mentor relationships. When a student is identified as both qualifying for the program and showing special interest to avidly pursue music, they are paired with a teacher for 30- or 60-minute lessons every week for the entire school year. All students in ACG Free Lessons are expected to perform publicly as soloists on a regular basis.
This year we established a special scholarship fund in the name of former Free Lesson participant, Javier Niño, whose life was tragically cut short by an impaired driver in February. You can learn more about this remarkable young man, his scholarship, and the scholarship’s first recipient, Elijah Flores, online here.
Mr. Flores wrote: “Classical guitar has changed my life and will always be valuable to me…I’m proud to call myself a classical guitarist.”
Juvenile Justice System
ACG’s Jeremy Osborne runs our Juvenile Justice programs. One of the most significant developments of 2019 is the addition of our second such program in Williamson County (WilCo). Instruction at WilCo began June 3rd, and the students performed July 8th, August 10th, and December 10th.
Our programs in juvenile justice are highly unusual. They are the only for-credit, daily, performing arts elective programs we know of in the United States. While there are many shorter-term enrichment or activity-based arts programs, the opportunity we have to make deep and lasting change through relationship-building and significant skills development is unusual. We’re thrilled, then, to have had the opportunity to build a second program in a neighboring county. We’re also very pleased to report that we are in talks to build a third program in Hays County in the year to come.
In September the Austin American Statesman published the largest print article ever written about ACG, over 3,000 words! The article includes special focus on our work in juvenile justice and a brief video feature shot in part at WilCo. You can view both the article and video feature online here.
Let’s Play: Braille Music Learning Resource
ACG began a guitar program at Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (TSBVI) in 2010. In 2012 we supported a Braille adaptation of our GuitarCurriculum.com resource that has led to a full-scale literacy-based guitar program there ever since led by Jeremy Coleman. In 2016 we became aware of the need for a lifelong learning pathway for Braille music readers on the classical guitar. No such pathway existed, and we had TSBVI graduates leaving school with skills for whom there was no supported lifelong learning sequence.
With the goal of addressing that need, we created LetsPlayGuitar.org, a free online resource pairing graded pieces of solo music in Braille and print formats with audio instruction guides for both guitar proficiency and Braille reading. The site launched in July 2018 and so far has had over 8,500 unique visitors and the Braille score packet (.brf) has been downloaded more than 1,500 times.
The site contained only beginning level material, however, and as soon as it launched we began a second phase of development. Phase 2 includes a site redesign, and significant content additions that should allow users at least 3-5 years of study material yielding successful students who are fluent music readers in first position on the guitar, who possess a full compliment of basic guitar techniques, and who can play dozens of beautiful solo pieces. We’re pleased to report that content is now complete for Phase 2, and the new site will launch in January 2020.
We’re also extremely excited to announce that Rados Malidzan, a world-class guitarist and educator in Montenegro, has asked to translate and adapt the materials for use in the Balkan Peninsula. After a nationwide fundraising campaign including multiple televised appearances, he has raised the funds necessary for the project. Our new website will be capable of supporting multiple languages from a single database.
GuitarCurriculum.com
GuitarCurriculum.com is the core of ACG Education. The philosophy, curriculum, and vast support materials within it have allowed us not only to advance the quality of classroom guitar education, but also to replicate success across the US and beyond. One of our top strategic goals has been to redevelop the site for superior functionality in terms of content, data, functionality, and appearance. It was a huge job and it took us years to complete, but we’re thrilled to report that the new site became fully functional in August, 2019.
We would love to take you on a personalized tour! Reach out any time.
We are also constantly adding and improving content within the site from new music, to new video and audio tutorials and guides. For example, we’ve recently added ten new ensemble pieces by Celil Refik Kaya representing music of central Asia. We also now have the capability to embed videos on the landing page of every piece in the teaching library so that ensembles around the world can be featured as models when other ensembles are learning a selection.
National Highlights
We now have over 800 curriculum users across the United States. Each week we hear about successes and challenges from our teaching partners far and wide. Our online Teacher Forum, email newsletter, GuitarCurriculum blog, webinar series, and social media channels are all ways we seek to stay in touch, and provide support for our many partner teachers. Of course we also have direct contact with teachers who attend our Teacher Training Summits (2019 Summits were in Austin and St. Louis), through in-service training (we visited New Mexico in 2019), and by individual email and telephone support.
Two places our team has spent the most time in person, on the phone, and online, have been St. Louis and Cleveland. We have enthusiastically invested a lot of resources in both areas because the leaders there have reflected back such tremendous energy, and such willingness to do the hard work of growth and community development, while at the same time always putting the needs of their communities first.
Cleveland Classical Guitar under the direction of Erik Mann has been so incredibly beautiful to watch. They have produced innovative programming, been in the local and national news a bunch (like this beautiful CBS Sunday Morning Broadcast), and this year won a $150,000 grant from the Cleveland Foundation to grow their programming to reach 500 students each week.
St. Louis Classical Guitar, run for many years by Bill Ash, and now led by super-talented Executive Director Kevin Ginty, has built more than twenty beautiful school programs. Our team has been in St. Louis training teachers every summer for seven years. The reach of their services has been a beautiful thing to watch first-hand. So you can imagine how happy we were when Bill Ash was recognized this year by the Missouri Arts Council as Arts Education Hero of The Year!
You have to imagine with us a time ten years ago when we had no sister organizations building education programs of this caliber anywhere in the country. Or twenty years ago when school-based guitar education was rarely found anywhere at all, few resources or standards existed, and our ideas were met with skepticism. Fast-forward to today when so many thousands of kids are finding joy and identity in school through participation in guitar, and partner organizations are winning major grants and awards, it’s like jet fuel for the ACG engine!
International Highlights
Who would have thought that a nonprofit music service organization in Austin, Texas, could help inspire kids in Mexico, could help put guitars in the hands of students in Cambodia, could train teachers in Nicaragua, or help build and fund a music education program in an orphanage in Kathmandu, Nepal? Who would have thought that the same organization could develop a Braille and audio guide lifelong learning resource that people as far away as Montenegro would want to raise funds to translate and bring to serve blind and visually impaired students in the Balkan Peninsula?
Not us! Yet here we are.
We’ve been overjoyed this year by our many wonderful connections across the globe. Some of our partnerships are well-established, like our work with Ravindra Paudyal at the Early Childhood Development Center in Kathmandu, Nepal. Ravindra regularly sends us videos of kids playing beautifully and confidently, and has plans to grow the program in Nepal soon.
Other initiatives are bubbling rapidly, like Rados Malidzan’s plan – mentioned earlier - to bring our LetsPlayGuitar.org Braille lifelong learning resource to Montenegro.
And still more programs, like our new partnership with the Caring For Cambodia network of schools, are just getting started. With our friends at Calido Guitars we’re just now sending twenty new guitars to Cambodia, and will begin teacher training soon.
Pro-Social Ecosystem
From time to time we like to share some of the theories behind the work we do. Several years ago, for example, we shared the Five Elements Theory of Deep Personal Significance that is the basis of our Teacher Behavior training and evaluation. While these theories can seem esoteric, we believe they are at the heart of what has made ACG successful overall because they guide and focus our work.
Pro-Social Ecosystem is the top concept to emerge from our 2018 Strategic Planning Process. It is the acknowledgement that our work does not happen in a vacuum, and the significance of an experience someone has with us is different based on who they are, and on what levels that experience resonates. In an effort to be the very best, most positively impactful service organization we can be, we have begun the development of a Pro-Social Ecosystem Playbook, and so far have defined three vectors: Breadth, Depth, and Interrelation.
Breadth refers to who we have the opportunity to impact at ACG. Our implicit goal is to have the widest breadth of impact possible. So along this vector are discussions of diversity in terms of ethnicity, culture, age, artistry, geography, economics, etc.
Depth refers to the impact itself. Not just the how, but the quality, relevance, resonance, value, transformative power, taking into account especially that what might make deep impact for one individual, can be quite different than what might make deep impact for another. This involves, then, investigation of personal significance (ACG Mission), and personal relevance (see Eric Booth’s Red Wheelbarrowvideo).
Interrelation refers to the mixing of both elements, potentially even in the absence of ACG involvement. An example might be a peer mentor program where students are coaching other students. Another example would be a student service project where students perform in retirement facilities. By mixing training, learning, performing, and production, with multiple populations, ACG sets in motion through Interrelation programming that expands both Breadth and Depth.
This year’s overall theme at ACG is Together. Together (see the poster image at the bottom of this report) is a direct outgrowth, of our Pro-Social Ecosystem Theory. We look forward to reporting on the progress of this theory and the various ways in which it will impact ACG Education in the months and years to come.
Thank You!
The programs and services described in this report are made possible through the generous support of many individual and institutional donors, including:
City of Austin Cultural Arts Division, Augustine Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Kaman Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Webber Family Foundation, Still Water Foundation, Lucy & Bill Farland, Rea Charitable Trust, Texas Commission on the Arts, HEB Tournament of Champions Charitable Trust, Tingari-Silverton Foundation, Kodosky Foundation, Long Foundation, The Skeel/Baldauf Family, Louise Epstein & John Henry McDonald, Bill Metz, MFS Foundation, University Area Rotary Club, Meyer Levy Charitable Foundation, Applied Materials Foundation, Shield-Ayres Foundation, Seawell Elam Foundation, Sue L. Nguyen Management Trust, Dr. Michael Froehls, Sarah & Ernest Butler, Mercedes-Benz of Austin, Carl Caricari & Margaret Murray Miller, Burdine Johnson Foundation, Rich & Caryn Puccio, Wright Family Foundation, 3M Foundation, Karrie & Tim League, Kendal & Ken Gladish, Jack & Vanessa Wolfe, D'Addario Foundation, Kerry & Carole Price, Rixen Law, Bank of America, Elaine & Michael Kasper, IBC Bank Austin, Strait Music, Urban Betty, Inc, PwC, Tesoros Trading Company, Calido Guitars, Ted Held & Nuria Zaragoza, Reverb Gives & Reverb.com, Chelle & David Neff, Lazan & Bill Pargaman, and many, many others.
If you would like to make a contribution to support ACG Education, click here, or call us at 512-300-2247.
The year is almost over, and that means it’s time for the ACG Top Ten! As always, we wracked our brains and then lobbied hard for our favorites, but because this list is brimming with so much beauty and gratitude, we’re all still smiling at the results.
We hope you love perusing these as much as we do. We hope our services make you proud. If you find something that inspires you, and it’s the right time to support our work, we hope you’ll consider making a year-end gift to help our Top Ten list a year from now sparkle even more!
And as always, if we forgot your favorite, by all means let us know. From all of us at ACG, Happy Holidays!
#10 National Guild for Community Arts Education
For more than fifty years the National Guild has been a leader in community arts education, bringing together educators and community servants from around the US and beyond, sharing ideas, and establishing best practices. So it was a big deal when they decided to have their 2019 conference at the JW Mariott Hotel in Austin, Texas this fall! It was an especially big deal for us for four reasons:
ACG Staff at National Guild Conference (Left to Right) - Matt Hinlsey, Jeremy Osborne, Karen Gallant, Travis Marcum, Jess Griggs
We gave a talk!Long-time board member, and current Nominating/Governance Chair Kendal Gladish, joined Director of Education Travis Marcum, and Executive Director Matt Hinsley to give a featured 90-minute presentation calledBoard and Staff Engagement: Service with a Purpose. It was a translation of ourFive Elementseducation theory into a board, staff, and volunteer engagement strategic framework (you can learn more about the Five Elementshere). Ask us about it – it’s actually really cool! And people seemed to like it.
We got a grant!Led by our operations Director Karen Gallant, along with Travis, ACG became one of twenty organizations nation-wide to be selected for a National Guild Catalyzing Creative Aging Grant. Look to out Top Ten of 2020 for something related to our roll out of new service for older adults!
Matt got an award!They give out “Milestone” awards for arts leaders who’ve made a difference for more than twenty years. Our Director of Development, James Fidlon, along with Travis, nominated Matt for the award and he was selected along with five others from around the nation. It was a nice moment.
Margaret Perry was honored.Margaret was a personal advisor to Matt, an ACG board member, an Austin arts icon, and a long-time member of the guild. She encouraged ACG for years to get involved with the guild. Her spirit was strong at this conference, and among many beautiful moments, the standout tribute was ACG board member, and Director of Armstrong Community Music School’s Liz Cass performing in her honor at the trustee’s reception.
#9 Heroes & Role Models
Great artists have great impact. Three artists in particular lifted us this year.
Berta Rojasinspired everyone with her soulful performance at our February gala. The evening’s student performers were from Crockett High School. The students met Berta after the show, but for the seniors in the group it was a special reunion, since they all remembered Berta’s visit to their school four years earlier. In fact, they told us they’d been fired up from the moment they learned they would be sharing the stage with her.
Berta Rojas with guitar students from Crockett HS.
Xuefei Yangopened our season in October. She prepared a special program of music from China and Spain representing her two greatest cultural influences. It was divine. But that’s not all she did here! Xuefei also gave a special interview and performance with the Austin Chinese American Network, taught talented students at UT Austin, visited with season ticket holders at our Gusto season opening dinner, and performed a private concert at Karrie and Tim League’s home in support of ACG Music & Healing.
Raphaël Feuillâtregave a wide-ranging virtuosic performance on our International Series in November. He was mind-blowing. But while he was here he also visited Bedicheck, Travis, McCallum, and LBJ schools. Perhaps his deepest impact was felt at the Gardner Betts Juvenile Justice Center where the young people connected quickly and deeply to his warm presence and beautiful playing. We’d never witnessed anything quite so powerful in a guest artist visit to the facility.
#8 Tickets for Good
In early September 2017, we joined forces with our friends in the Miro Quartet, Conspirare, and Austin Chamber Music Center to raise disaster relief funds in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. Hope After Harvey, as the fundraiser concert was called, raised $37,500, two car-loads of donated goods, and 200 clean-up volunteer names, in four days.
When things settled down at the ACG office and we reflected on the experience of running an event and sending 100% of the proceeds away to charity, we realized that we wanted our efforts to continue to benefit area nonprofit organizations doing vital work in our community.ACG Tickets For Goodwas born.
Since then we’ve raised thousands of dollars allowing supporters of local nonprofits to designate partner organizations to be recipients of 100% of their ticket purchase to our major events. One fun story we heard was from David Conger, Director of the guitar program at Lamar Middle School. He usedACG Tickets For Goodto raise money to buy a new bass guitar for their school program. When we sent Lamar their check for $1,582 we were delighted to get David’s reply that the bass guitar they were purchasing was going to cost $1,595 – just $13 away!
Perhaps our most memorable fundraiser in 2019 was at the home of Mai Barazi and Hachem Dadouch. The concert featured UK-based Syrian guitarist Ayman Jarjour, and raised more than $7,500 for a scholarship fund for Syrian refugees.
#7 Music & Healing
Travis Marcum, ACG Director of Education, has been leading the way in ACG’s Music & Healing initiative for the past five years. It all began with our Lullaby Project in partnership with Carnegie Hall. Since then Travis has developed programming and worked directly with individuals facing a range of challenges from incarceration, to hospitalization, to homelessness.
Here’s a bit of a story from Dell Children’s Hospital Travis shared in May:
In early April, I met with a teenage girl – I’ll call her Anna – who expressed interest in taking guitar lessons during the three months she was hospitalized for a major procedure. We met every few days to have a lesson, play guitar, and talk about life and music.
Within moments of our first meeting, I learned that Anna had lived in Spain, and was a huge fan of flamenco music. Soon after, I found out that ACG’s good friend and world-class flamenco guitarist, Grisha, would be in Houston for a concert in May. I had an idea.
Kids got together in awesomeness a lot this year. Like, literally thousands of them, thousands of times! But a few of those times standout as particularly noteworthy.
In The Schools: In November, ACG Executive Director Matt Hinsley and ACG Artistic Director Joseph Williams conducted Austin ISD All Region Middle and High School ensembles with students from all over town, and in April nearly 1,000 kids in over 40 ensembles participated in Austin ISD’s Concert and Sight Reading Contest. These events are a big deal any way you look at it, but for us they’re particular pride points because the overall level is high, and because ACG has literally created these events for the district from inception, to design, to execution over the course of the past decade. Now we help other districts make similar standard-setting celebratory events around Texas and beyond.
In The Studio: Long time ACG Youth Orchestra (ACGYO) member Lennox Kolics is interested in recording tech and asked to be a summer intern, ACGYO has awesome players, and the ACG curriculum used around the world (GuitarCurriculum.com) is hungry for model recordings of the vast number of pieces in its teaching library. So a match was made! Thanks to some willing ACGYO colleagues, and generous support form Shay Brown and Chez Boom Audio here in town, ten (that’s right, ten!) new recordings were made for the curriculum with ACGYO artists and Lennox at the board.
Lennox Kolics in the studio.
ACG Trio: Can’t believe it took this long for something like this to happen, but this summer three amazing ACG alumni got together to form the ACG Trio! The players are Justice Phillips (UT composition graduate, and current full-time ACG Operations Associate who we’ve known since Lively Middle School), Angelica Campbell (UT guitar major, junior, who we met at Crockett High School), and Alex Lew (UT guitar major, senior, who we first met at Lamar Middle School). They’ve been super busy performing all over town including two appearances at UT’s James TurrellSkyspacewhere they gave the premiere performances of the ACG-commissioned new work by Matthew Lyons calledSkyspace, written for the occasion (Matthew is an alum too, who went on to San Francisco Conservatory, before a composition degree at UT!!).
ACGYO San Francisco: It was our first ACGYO tour, and it was awesome. Members and parents worked alongside ACG Artistic Director Joseph Williams to plan, raise money, and elevate their level of playing to “sublime,” before heading out to San Francisco where they joined other amazing young people at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, performed to open an Omi Foundation Dynamite Guitars series event, and then played at the Alamo Drafthouse San Francisco to open a sold-out screening ofBack To The Future. Why? Because when kids play guitar, the future gets better!
#5 A Whole New GuitarCurriculum.com
It may seem like a website redesign doesn’t belong in fifth place in a Top Ten list but trust us, this place is hard-earned!
First, it’s important to know that GuitarCurriculum.com is at the center of all our education program building. The shortest version of the story? We started in school-based guitar education in 1 school with 15 students in 2001. By 2004 we were in 2 schools with 100 students, and while we’d had good times, and 6 kids that had gone to college with music scholarships, we’d also come to realize that the world lacked the resources we needed to build the guitar programs of our dreams. So we worked like crazy from 2004 to 2008, invested about $250,000 in the early development, launched GuitarCurriculum.com in October 2008, and now it’s used in our 60 central Texas programs, across the state, in forty other US states, and in about 20 countries. Whew!
Second, about the redesign. Let’s just say it’s a process we started in 2012, it includes work in multiple countries, multiple languages, many web developers, firms, and consultants, several notable power outages, one car accident, one particularly disruptive invasion, a reunion across the world, and loads of good, old-fashioned elbow grease.
What’s new? Lots of things you can’t see, but make updating, data management, and functionality all superior in the backend. Then there’s the new logo, the appearance, and tons of awesome new content from video, to news, forum, and plenty of marvelous music. Now we’re cookin’, and wildly excited about the future of ACG Education now that we’ve got a shiny new machine in the garage!
#4 Javier Niño Scholarship
In February 2019 the world lost a marvelous young man long before his time. An impaired driver took Javier Niño’s life on the way home from the gym partway through his first year at St. Edward’s University.
Javi was a beautiful human being, warm, talented, and generous. We first met him as a high school freshman at Eastside Memorial High School. He fell in love with guitar, worked with ACG’s Jeremy Osborne to win a scholarship to attend McCallum High School. There he worked with McCallum’s Andrew Clark and would proceed to take lessons with ACG’s Performance Engagement Artist Joseph Palmer. Javi distinguished himself as a soloist and in ensemble. His many performances and competitions with his McCallum Quartet were particularly notable. As part of a college essay, Javi wrote this about Joseph Palmer:
After seeing Joseph play, I was inspired to pick up the guitar. I decided to give it my all and be just as cool as him. I even started taking guitar classes in high school. I ended up coming in contact with Joseph later, and he took me under his wing as one of his students.
Becoming his student taught me how to be disciplined. It was hard, but I had so much enthusiasm to become a better guitarist that over time I was able to develop discipline. I also applied the strict discipline of practicing guitar to my schoolwork.
I always strived to be as good as him. I admired how amazing Joseph played and how easy he made it seem. It helped me understand what determination is and how to pursue it. Have you ever wanted something so badly that you are willing to set everything aside just to accomplish that goal? That’s exactly how much I wanted to become a great player, and I established my determination to do so.
It was later in the spring that Diane Skeel, the mother of one of Javi’s McCallum Quartet partners Aaron Baldauf, approached us about beginning a scholarship fund in Javi’s honor. Through Diane’s hard work and the generosity of many including the Skeel/Baldauf family, the scholarship was begun. We awarded the first scholarship in October to Elijah Flores, a terrific guitarist from Crockett High School. You can read more about Elijah online here, and learn more about the Javier Niño Scholarship Fund online here.
#3 St. Louis & Cleveland
As ACG Education has grown many service-minded educators and organization leaders around the US and beyond have approached us to collaborate for training, strategy, or just plain-old advice. Two places our team has spent the most time in person, on the phone, and online, have been St. Louis and Cleveland. We have enthusiastically invested a lot of resources in both areas because the leaders have reflected back such tremendous energy, and such willingness to do the hard work of growth and community development, while at the same time always putting the needs of their communities first.
Cleveland Classical Guitar under the direction of Erik Mann has been so incredibly beautiful to watch. They have produced innovative programming, been in the local and national news a bunch (like this beautiful CBS Sunday Morning Broadcast), and this year won a $150,000 grant from the Cleveland Foundation to grow their programming to reach 500 students each week.
St. Louis Classical Guitar, run for many years by Bill Ash, and now led by super-talented Executive Director Kevin Ginty, has built more than twenty beautiful school programs. Out team has been in St. Louis training teachers every summer for seven years. The reach of their services has been a beautiful thing to watch first-hand. So you can imagine how happy we were when Bill Ash was recognized this year by the Missouri Arts Council as Arts Education Hero of The Year!
You have to imagine with us for a moment a time ten years ago when we had no sister organizations building education programs of this caliber anywhere in the country. Or twenty years ago when school-based guitar education was rarely found anywhere at all, few resources or standards existed, and our ideas were met with skepticism. Fast-forward to today when so many thousands of kids are finding joy and identity in school through participation in guitar, and partner organizations are winning major grants and awards, it’s like jet fuel for the ACG engine!
#2 ACG Global Services
Who would have thought that a nonprofit music service organization in Austin, Texas, could help inspire kids in Mexico, could help put guitars in the hands of students in Cambodia, could train teachers in Nicaragua, or help build and fund a music education program in an orphanage in Kathmandu, Nepal? Who would have thought that the same organization could develop a Braille and audio guide lifelong learning resource that people as far away as Montenegro would want to raise funds to translate and bring to serve blind and visually impaired students in the Balkan Peninsula?
Not us! Yet here we are.
We’ve been overjoyed this year by our many wonderful connections across the globe. Some of our partnerships are well-established, like our work with Ravindra Paudyal at the Early Childhood Development Center in Kathmandu, Nepal. Ravindra regularly sends us videos of kids playing beautifully and confidently, and has plans to grow the program in Nepal soon.
Other initiatives are bubbling rapidly, like Rados Malidzan’s plan to bring our LetsPlayGuitar.org Braille lifelong learning resource to Montenegro. Among other things, Rados was on national TV shows raising money for the effort, which begins in January (seen to the left).
And still more programs, like our new partnership with the Caring For Cambodia network of schools, are just getting started. With our friends at Calido Guitars we’re just now sending twenty new guitars to Cambodia, and will begin teacher training soon.
A bonus item we’d like to mention here is the new KLRU PBS television special that came out the day after Thanksgiving on our April 2019 production of FlamencoIndia with Oliver Rajamani and Jeronimo Maya. We’re putting this here because it’s awesome. And also because we believe strongly in our role as an agent of positive international cultural exchange through arts, but that exchange can happen right here in Austin too, and there’s no better example than Rajamani’s FlamencoIndia. [Watch it here]
#1 ACG Juvenile Justice Services
We are coming up on ten years of ACG Education for incarcerated youth in Travis County. We made a commitment in 2010, and we’ve been teaching kids in the Gardner Betts Juvenile Justice Center virtually every school day ever since. It’s hard to encapsulate what this program means to us, and what we believe it means for the kids we serve. The best we can do, perhaps, is to invite you to come see them perform. The experience is life-changing.
But just loving a program is not enough to land it in first place on the ACG Top Ten list! We placed this program here for a few other reasons. First, 2019 saw the development of a second ACG Education program for incarcerated youth, this one in Williamson County. Instruction began there on June 3rd, and there have already been three beautiful public performances, and some amazing stories of courage and transformation.
Additionally, in September the Austin American Statesman published the most extensive article ever about Austin Classical Guitar (over 3,000 words!). Michael Barnes’ beautiful piece began with a story about a paper guitar made for ACG’s Jeremy Osborne by a grateful student in Gardner Betts, and the article online even includes a video feature about the new Williamson County program.
We are now in talks with yet another county judge about building a third program in 2020, so stay tuned! We truly believe that this program could bring indescribable benefits to court-involved youth across Texas and across our nation in the years to come.
Thank you for being together with us. For helping make the ACG family beautiful, vibrant, and loving. And we can't wait to see what the new year and decade has in store for us!
From the Desk is an Austin Classical Guitar (ACG) and GuitarCurriculum.com series that explores the organization through the eyes of the staff members. These articles focus on the staff’s thoughts and motivations, and hopefully provides a chance to get to know the people behind the scenes.
This week’s From the Desk is written by ACG Partner Teacher, Phil Swasey. Phil is currently a classroom Guitar Director at Bedichek Middle School in Austin I.S.D., he is the district content lead for middle school guitar and mariachi, and was named the campus Teacher of the Year in 2016. In the classroom, his focus remains on finding creative and empowering strategies to remove common obstacles in the way of student success.
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Impact in the First Years of Teaching by Phil Swasey
As most teachers can attest to, the first years in the classroom can be an emotional, physical and mentally trying time for young professionals. Working with directors that are experiencing these fresh and raw feelings for the first time has encouraged me to look back at my own experiences during the early stages of my career.
Almost ten years ago, after deciding on a career change and a cross-country move to Austin, I finished my alternative certification with Region XIII and jumped right into the classroom. I was excited to be on my feet, not chained to a desk, and grateful to have a guitar in my hands, collecting an adult paycheck.
Despite my eagerness, my classroom was not the magical learning environment that I had envisioned. It was a chaotic swirl of indecisiveness, unwanted student behaviors, emotional swings and a general doubt about my effectiveness as a teacher. When I looked at my first group of 6th grade beginning guitarists, motivated, wide-eyed and full of potential, I thought that they deserved someone more experienced to guide them through the start of their musical careers.
During my moments of doubt, ACG and Jeremy Osbourne were there to support me and focus my energy on solutions to the problems that I was facing. I’m convinced that this outreach helped me to obtain a level of confidence in my practice, allowing me to serve my students more effectively early on.
The truth likely is, my classroom was never as chaotic as I perceived it to be. Maintaining perspective on your own teaching practice and environment is a constant challenge. Teachers are impactful from their first moments on campus, and having mentors around to encourage growth and recognize strength is an invaluable part of learning the teaching craft.
The 6th graders that I looked at with doubt and hesitancy graduated from high school last year, many having continued on with guitar through their senior year at Crockett High School. Watching them mature as musicians and people over the last 7 years was a continual source of reward and gratification.
Last year, I was talking with Rey, one of the students from that chaotic and mis-managed beginning guitar class. He was preparing his college applications for guitar performance, and in a moment I will never forget, he said, “I wouldn’t be doing this without you.” Rey is now on scholarship at the University of Texas and I couldn’t be more proud of him. This serves as a reminder for me that teachers are impactful every day of their careers, even the first one.
Postcards is an Austin Classical Guitar (ACG) and GuitarCurriculum.com series that explores the guitar programs around the nation and strives to bring the guitar teacher community together.
This week’s Postcards is written by Dr. Kevin Vigil, Guitar & Music Theory Director at Heritage High School, Chair of the Virginia Music Educators Association Guitar Council & All-Virginia Guitar Ensemble, and Member-At-Large of the NAfME Council for Guitar Education.
This week, Dr. Vigil focuses on a student in his county, Jack Osborne, excelling in the guitar world!
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Postcard from Loudoun County, VA - By Dr. Kevin Vigil
Meet Jack!
Jack Osborne is a senior at Briar Woods High School (BWHS) in Loudoun County Public Schools. He served as concertmaster for the 2019 NAfME All-National Honors Guitar Ensemble that took place from November 7 – 10. Not only was Jack selected for this honor, but also acted as concertmaster for the 2018 All-Virginia Guitar Ensemble (AVGE) and (again) for the 2019 AVGE; which performed on November 21. Oh yeah… he also won the Beatty Scholarship Competition in Washington, DC! Among the prizes was the opportunity to open up for classical guitar legend, David Russell.
So how did Jack get to this point?
One word - opportunity.
Jack has had the opportunity to learn guitar at BWHS under the direction of Dr. Michael Murphy, from his private instructor, Jamey Mann, and the PAVAN Regional Governor’s School to list a few. Jack has also, and perhaps more importantly, had opportunities to stumble along the way. He told me about a poor outcome from a competition; which damaged his spirit and passion to continue with guitar. However, a friend and fellow competitor, Ryan Robinson, gave him some sound advice, “performing is not about winning or losing, but about reaching your audience.”
Jack has certainly taken his friend’s advice and continues to strive to reach others with his musical performances. He is also planning definitely to continue his studies of the instrument in college as a performance major and potentially double major with computer science.
We’d love to hear about guitar in your part of the world next! Reach out to Jess Griggs anytime with your story and a photo or two.
Dr. Thomas Echols - performer, composer, songwriter, instructor at Austin Community College – is one of the most creative artistic innovators we know. At home in many styles and multiple media, Echols was the mastermind behind ACG’s Summer Series NARRATIVES that rolled together poetry from Argentina, Portugal, and England, minimalism, ancient and modern instruments, synthesizers, and contemporary responsive composition.
On Sunday, December 1st at 2pm (doors at 1:30), Echols will be joined by award-winning and supremely imaginative Invoke String Quartet for the first of two ACG Live at the Library shows. The event will be held at Austin’s new Central Public Library, it’s free, and open to the public.
We asked Echols to share a few thoughts on the show, which he’s calling, EVENING:
ACG: Tell us about EVENING?
TE: Evening” presents a sonic landscape that is inhabited by songs, compositions, and improvisations. The focal points of the performance are four songs, somewhat sparse and inward looking, that unfold out into instrumental forays. At times, the players are guided by GRADUS, a contrapuntal algorithm that I built to be an additional participant in the work. GRADUS performs a complex role: providing pitch content to be played by us, processing the sounds captured from our instruments, and performing newly generated material through various types of synthesis. The emotive content of the songs is rather soft, dark, and heavy. GRADUS provides a kind of levity, by revealing that a lot of these same sonic experiences can come from a source essentially devoid of emotion (a computer). To help GRADUS to follow our expressive intent, I have made a device that mounts to my guitar that sends the algorithm information about the physical movement of my guitar and monitors the motion of my left hand, as I engage in a kind of hyperbolic expressive histrionics to communicate musical intention.
ACG: What do you love about working with Invoke String Quartet?
TE: Invoke, is amazing! They are a top-shelf string quartet that has chosen to ardently pursue a path of deep creative work: improvising, composing, song-writing, and working with new composers. With Invoke, I can provide a skeletal layout of what we are working on, and we can improvise around it until we come to something we love. I can also give them a detailed score and they can read it easily. They are a dream.
ACG: What do you wish everyone knew about working with synthesizers/electronic music?
TE: It’s more than people often think it is. Synthesizers are an amazing way to learn about traditional instruments: by creating a “patch” that resembles the sound of a clarinet or snare drum, you learn quite a lot! So, it is a means of learning to orchestrate. But just as importantly, computers, synths, circuits et al are a way of exploring new sounds and textures, new ways for musicians to engage with themselves, other musicians, and their audiences through various interactive techniques.
ACG: Why is creativity important to you, to humanity?
TE: When thinking of creativity, I really come to focus on two things: the idea of free will and of learning as its expression. A hot take on free will through a Tolstoyan lense is that we have it, but we have a whole lot less than we like to think. We are bound by a multitude of constraints that determine so much about our live, but in spite of that, we do guide the ship in some way.
About learning.... Creativity, for me, is the natural end result of learning, with learning and creating being somewhat like inhaling and exhaling. The creative act is the trace left by the fire that was the learning.
The creative part seems to come about through an important need: the need to connect with others, while continuously learning about the next thing that we will eventually create serves as a kind of path towards greater freedom. So, going back to the free will thing, a creative life allow a person to have greater agency, providing us with the most obvious mean of having a say in what we become. That's the long and short of it, so I tend to focus on learning and then find myself creating as a kind of happy accident, at least in the initial inception of the thing!
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Thank you Dr. Tom! We can’t wait. Learn more about Thomas Echols on his website or by checking out his band here.
Matthew Lyons is an Austin based composer, performer, and arranger. Lyons was recently commission by the ACG Trio for their November 24th performance at Skyspace. In this interview, he discusses his compositions, and specific challenges and inspirations for the Skyspace piece.
Earliest experiences in music?
My earliest musical memory is listening to Beatles albums on cassette in the car - I had the albums memorized by color as opposed to name, so I’d say “Green one!” (perhaps that was Rubber Soul, for example).
I began studying guitar in 3rd grade. I took classical lessons, but wanted to be in a rock band. A pivotal moment was playing a song I wrote in the 5th grade talent show about my two Dachshunds, with my friend Chris playing rhythm guitar. When I ended the song by laying on the whammy bar (attached to the bridge of the guitar, moves the pitch up and down) all the other kids present thought that was just the coolest.
What led you into composition?
I’ve always written music, since I began taking guitar lessons. As my playing evolved, so did my compositional language. I chose to study classical guitarfor my undergrad, but my teacher encouraged me to lean into composing more. After I developed a hand injury that made further classical guitar studies no longer an option, I decided to start studying composition at UT Austin, and quickly realized that I was on the right path.
Can you talk about some of the themes you explore in your music? Both as a composer and performer?
Each of my pieces tends to take on a different narrative - the only themes I can think of in my music are more abstract, such as a focus on colorful, jazz-inspired harmony, and themes and textures that both engage the audience while sometimes challenging them. It’s important to me that whatever might be interesting or engaging about my music is apparent on the surface. As a guitarist-composer, anything I write for guitar always has the intention of stretching the existing repertoire in some way. One thing I’ve experimented with recently is guitar and live electronics with a computer processing sound in real time.
What are some influences in your work?
My favorite composers are J.S. Bach and Maurice Ravel, even though my music doesn’t sound at all like the former. Within the current climate of “classical music” (whatever that even means any more) I find myself gravitating towards composers and styles that are openly influenced by minimalism,”post-minimalism,” and/or popular styles. My favorite living musician is the jazz pianist Brad Mehldau - I listen to his music probably more than all other music combined. Something about it resonates with me - his integration of classical technique and form into original compositions and jazz versions of popular songs (including Radiohead and The Beatles). The Beatles have always been my favorite band, and the charm of their music and personalities is something I can only try to emulate.
What are you hoping to accomplish with this composition in Skyspace?
Just as the gazers’ focus in the installation shifts between the sky and the changing colors of the installation, I want the music to be on the threshold of attention, sometimes engaging the audience more and other times falling into the background of the overall experience.
How does the unusual venue inspire or shape your composition?
As I mentioned before, exploring colorful harmonies and the expressive relationship they create is one of my main compositional impulses. When I went to check out the space, experiencing the slowly shifting colors seemed to me like a great analog for slowly changing harmonic progressions. As someone who has music synesthesia, I associate certain colors with certain harmonies - not so much poetically as literally. The shifting colors of the sky - from brighter, to red, to dark blue - influenced the harmonic structure of the piece.
What challenges does it present?
Some practical issues include the fact that the piece is about a third the amount of time that the audience will be in the installation (although people can technically come and go as they please), and so when and how exactly to start and end will be unconventional for both audience and performers.
More information about SkySpace can be found on UT-Austin's website.
There’s no better way to describe Ravindra Paudyal than an absolute miracle worker. Internationally trained and accomplished, Ravindra began teaching at the Early Childhood Development Center in Nepal earlier this year and has already made a world of difference in the lives of his students.
In Nepal, resources are limited for children, especially those of incarcerated parents. According to UNICEF’s 2010 Nepal Child Poverty Report, over a third of Nepal’s 12.6 million children live below the national poverty line, and two in every five of them are severely deprived of at least two basic human needs. With life on the street as their only alternative, many Nepali children are forced to accompany their mothers to jail, since caretakers in the area are few and far between. Nepalese law permits children to stay in jail with their incarcerated mothers only until they reach the age of five, at which point relatives usually assume custody. Unfortunately, in many cases there are no relatives available to take care of these children, ultimately leaving them helpless and homeless.
That’s where ECDC comes in. Their mission aims to ensure incarcerated mothers have more control over their children’s fate, working tirelessly to supply each and every child with the resources necessary to shape their ideal future. With the help of Ravindra and the rest of their team, ECDC offers these children something they could never get in prison: the chance to be a kid. Through the power of music, children who were once in a seemingly impossible position are given a fresh start, finally able to enjoy their childhood.
Ravindra leads classical guitar classes every week, using ACG’s resource GuitarCurriculum.com to teach his students how to play and perform. For them, music is more than entertainment, it’s a rare privilege that becomes a source of great pride when they learn how to create it themselves.
Ravindra Paudyal
“They want to show their ability and enjoy themselves in the field of music, and as a result, they find their dreams here,” Ravindra explains.
Much like the children he teaches, Ravindra’s own upbringing largely shaped his future in music. “My older brother was a very good musician, until all of a sudden he became very ill and his kidney stopped working. At the hospital, he held my hand and told me, ‘you must learn music, because I don’t think I’ll get the chance.’ It was very hard for me to hear those words. Then one day he passed away. Our house, once full of musical sound and melody, suddenly turned into grave silence. These circumstances are what inspired me to learn music.”
Slowly but surely, Ravindra began practicing guitar by himself. “I couldn’t help but feel like the soul of my brother was imbedded in me. I felt like his dream was leading me,” he recalls. “Since then, I’ve realized just how much my instrument means to me. My guitar became a friend that led me to celebrate in joy, counseled me and supported me during my sorrows.”
Teaching guitar allows Ravindra to do the same for his students. “My greatest wish is to produce brilliant classical musicians through ECDC, so that they can make a living on their own after they leave the program. Beyond that, I hope to produce future teachers through ECDC so that they can teach the next generation of musicians.”
He insists that ACG has made it all possible. “Working with ACG is truly gratifying because of their heartfelt intentions and their prolific direction of creating skillful musicians by providing quality education purely based on non-profit social work. They provide countless opportunities to a lot of skilled classical musicians, which drives me to be truthful and dedicated in my work. Because of this, I’ve been fortunate enough to enhance the lives of so many children.”
Austin Classical Guitar: What has this project meant to you so far, has anything surprised you?
Since 2012, Cleveland Classical Guitar Society has been working with schools and neighborhood centers to build classical guitar classes where the need is the highest. In the last few years, the achievement of our students has been so exciting to watch, with a feature nationwide on CBS This Morning, two of our students getting into a fellowship at Cleveland Institute of Music, performances prestigious venues like Severance Hall (home of the Cleveland Orchestra) and Cleveland Museum of Art, acceptance in Interlochen and Brevard summer camps, and much more. Thanks to a recent grant from the Cleveland Foundation, which represents the largest grant in CCGS history, we now have over 550 students in grades 2-12 studying in our program.
ACG’s Jeremy Osborne runs our Juvenile Justice programs. One of the most significant developments of 2019 is the addition of our second such program in Williamson County (WilCo). Instruction at WilCo began June 3rd, and the students performed July 8th, August 10th, and December 10th. 
GuitarCurriculum.com is the core of ACG Education. The philosophy, curriculum, and vast support materials within it have allowed us not only to advance the quality of classroom guitar education, but also to replicate success across the US and beyond. One of our top strategic goals has been to redevelop the site for superior functionality in terms of content, data, functionality, and appearance. It was a huge job and it took us years to complete, but we’re thrilled to report that the new site became fully functional in August, 2019. 
Who would have thought that a nonprofit music service organization in Austin, Texas, could help inspire kids in Mexico, could help put guitars in the hands of students in Cambodia, could train teachers in Nicaragua, or help build and fund a music education program in an orphanage in Kathmandu, Nepal? Who would have thought that the same organization could develop a Braille and audio guide lifelong learning resource that people as far away as Montenegro would want to raise funds to translate and bring to serve blind and visually impaired students in the Balkan Peninsula? 
Xuefei Yang opened our season in October. She prepared a special program of music from China and Spain representing her two greatest cultural influences. It was divine. But that’s not all she did here! Xuefei also gave a special interview and performance with the Austin Chinese American Network, taught talented students at UT Austin, visited with season ticket holders at our Gusto season opening dinner, and performed a private concert at Karrie and Tim League’s home in support of ACG Music & Healing.
Since then we’ve raised thousands of dollars allowing supporters of local nonprofits to designate partner organizations to be recipients of 100% of their ticket purchase to our major events. One fun story we heard was from David Conger, Director of the guitar program at Lamar Middle School. He used ACG Tickets For Good to raise money to buy a new bass guitar for their school program. When we sent Lamar their check for $1,582 we were delighted to get David’s reply that the bass guitar they were purchasing was going to cost $1,595 – just $13 away!
ACG Trio: Can’t believe it took this long for something like this to happen, but this summer three amazing ACG alumni got together to form the ACG Trio! The players are Justice Phillips (UT composition graduate, and current full-time ACG Operations Associate who we’ve known since Lively Middle School), Angelica Campbell (UT guitar major, junior, who we met at Crockett High School), and Alex Lew (UT guitar major, senior, who we first met at Lamar Middle School). They’ve been super busy performing all over town including two appearances at UT’s James Turrell Skyspace where they gave the premiere performances of the ACG-commissioned new work by Matthew Lyons called Skyspace, written for the occasion (Matthew is an alum too, who went on to San Francisco Conservatory, before a composition degree at UT!!).
After seeing Joseph play, I was inspired to pick up the guitar. I decided to give it my all and be just as cool as him. I even started taking guitar classes in high school. I ended up coming in contact with Joseph later, and he took me under his wing as one of his students.
St. Louis Classical Guitar, run for many years by Bill Ash, and now led by super-talented Executive Director Kevin Ginty, has built more than twenty beautiful school programs. Out team has been in St. Louis training teachers every summer for seven years. The reach of their services has been a beautiful thing to watch first-hand. So you can imagine how happy we were when Bill Ash was recognized this year by the Missouri Arts Council as Arts Education Hero of The Year!
Other initiatives are bubbling rapidly, like Rados Malidzan’s plan to bring our LetsPlayGuitar.org Braille lifelong learning resource to Montenegro. Among other things, Rados was on national TV shows raising money for the effort, which begins in January (seen to the left).
As most teachers can attest to, the first years in the classroom can be an emotional, physical and mentally trying time for young professionals. Working with directors that are experiencing these fresh and raw feelings for the first time has encouraged me to look back at my own experiences during the early stages of my career.
TE: When thinking of creativity, I really come to focus on two things: the idea of free will and of learning as its expression. A hot take on free will through a Tolstoyan lense is that we have it, but we have a whole lot less than we like to think. We are bound by a multitude of constraints that determine so much about our live, but in spite of that, we do guide the ship in some way.
