“Listen Up:” A Catalyst for Community Creativity

 — by Margie Doyle —

The Orcas Island Chamber Music Festival announced on Friday,  May 9, that it has been awarded a National Education for the Arts (NEA) grant for the “Listen Up” project on Orcas Island.

Aloysia Friedmann, Chamber Music Festival (OICMF) Artistic Director and Victoria Parker, OICMF Executive Director, met with about 20 community musicians and educators, along with Roman Borys of the Gryphon Trio and Rob Kapilow, composer and author of  All You Have to Do is Listen, and What Makes it Great.

With the assistance of Orcas Island School Principals, the music education project will start in the school classrooms with poetry writing on the selected theme. Similar past projects created by Kapilow have been the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.  The Gryphon Trio, from Ottawa, Canada is also planning similar projects in Powell River, British Columbia and Yellowknife, Inviat provinces next year: the theme will be “The Elements: Earth, Wind, Fire and Water.”

The second element of the project will be “demystifying the compositional process,” said Rob Kapilow. Students will learn to identify motifs or themes in musical composition (an example is the 10-note introduction of the French anthem “La Marseillaise” in Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture”). Those student-created motifs and poems will be “stretched” and developed and Rob Kapilow will take “a stack of little ideas” and compose a piece for piano trio and choir.

Performance of this piece, which can include other arts, including dance, video, visual arts, in the Spring of 2015 is the culmination of the project. That 90-minute performance, said Victoria Parker, is the only reporting requirement of the NEA grant.

Encouraged by Borys and Kapilow, the audience was quick to catch the excitement of the creative process and expand the educational, participatory components of “Listen Up” to the whole community.

Glenn Prestwich, OICMF Board Member, summed up the project as “Democratization of making and experiencing music” with the goal of audience development. Friedmann and Parker agreed, saying that such a project has long been a goal of the 17-year old Chamber Music Festival. Rob said, “It’s not the arts — over there — but YOUR arts.”

The focus group brainstormed thematic concepts for the project, ranging from islands to  ferries, family, the school rebuilding project, island hamlets, dance, “a day in island life,” and the medicinal, healing aspects of music. They suggested field (outdoor) recordings, video access and training, a “found instrument” band, a Facebook page, improvisational “camp,” and island poets and storytellers’ engagement as ways to engage community collaboration.

Orcas Elementary Principal Kathy Page said she was excited by the engagement of students in the empowering creative process. Teachers are already incorporating ideas about the elements of writing and “authorship” in the primary grades this year, she said.

The most successful “Listen Up” projects are those where a full spectrum of the island community can teach each other to share the creative process; where “natural-born mentors and teachers” come forward, Rob said. Selecting a theme and expanding upon it to encourage that collaboration is the work of “Listen Up.”

Victoria Parker said planning for the grant was “undecided, but not amorphous.” She will be the project coordinator, and Roman described himself as its “producer;” he “puts it together turns it into a show

Next steps include an analysis of the groups’ participation and perhaps a meeting within a month.

Any organizations or individuals who want to know more, to participate or be on the communication list may contact Victoria via email.