Two events last weekend by organizations that I've been involved with for a very long time reminded me of the importance of dedicated teachers in the arts. The Duke University Pre-Collegiate String School (or DUSS), founded by Dorothy Kitchen, celebrated it's 40th anniversary Saturday. I've had the privilege of working with Dorothy for almost 25 years now and have witnessed her transform/mold/empower/encourage the lives of so many young people. Through an era of schools cutting back on music ensembles she kept string playing alive and well in the Triangle. In a world that rewards cheating and cutting corners she gives her students the permission to work toward perfection and helps them find the rewards and joys of putting your heart and soul and sweat and tears into making beautiful music happen. That she has done this for so many years, and continues to do it with a grueling teaching schedule in addition to being a wife, mother, grandmother and a person with many, many other interests in the world is a tribute to her dedication to making real, quality music-making a possibility for every young person who wants it.

Another wonderful person making the arts a reality for young people is Gene Medler, founder and director of the North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble. I played (in a jazz trio) for NCYTE's Spring Concert last weekend. First off, this is NOT your average children's tap group. NCYTE is THE standard for youth tap across the country. The NCYTE approach reminds me of the Suzuki teaching approach. The company performs many of the same pieces year to year along with some newly choreographed works and reworked older ones. The older kids teach the dances to the younger kids. There is a lot of one-on-one between the students with very little intervention on the part of the teacher. Guest artists/teachers from the professional world of tap as well as former students drop in to round out the mix. There is a real sense of community there as well as some friendly competition. But all are working together for the good of the company.

The DUSS approach is much more top-down which is understandable given that the process involves private lessons with a teacher and orchestras with a conductor. But as I said - both methods yield excellent results. Gene Medler and Dorothy Kitchen's approaches to teaching are probably miles apart but the result is the same - young people with a very high degree of artistic excellence and enthusiasm.

Seeing/hearing the young people in performance is the reward for the rest of us. I highly recommend you keep an eye out for upcoming performances by these groups.

The RIAA is having a field day. New "royalties" are going to be imposed on internet radio broadcasting that will pretty much wipe out most stations and greatly reduce the diversity of music you can hear on the web. It isn't enough that payola is alive and well (albeit in a more "legal" form) in commercial radio greatly limiting who and what you get to hear on the airwaves. Now the RIAA has lobbied for and won exorbitant fees to be charged to Internet radio broadcasts that are way above what traditional broadcasting has to pay.

A history and numbers can be found here

A petition you should sign can be found here

And the Save Internet Radio website is here

The changes will be retroactive to Jan. 1, 2006 so if they take effect they will bankrupt the many small internet radio stations that promote artists and serve listeners with diverse musical offerings. Please sign this petition NOW!

Check out my latest favorite Internet Radio which takes some of your musical preferences and generates a "station" that will introduce you to music you've never heard - much of which you will love (and some you will hate - but it's worth it!)

Pandora Internet Radio

You can go to my Pandora generated station here and click the "play now" link.

 Update: 

The plot thickens - read this 

From time to time I get sudden flashbacks to some bad or embarrassing scene from the past. They make me shudder or exhale or sometimes even mutter something to try and make the thought pass on. They are nothing big and I don't know why they plague me decades later but they live on in my body somewhere. One of the most frequent visitors is from college days - freshmen orientation, to be exact. It was the only time in my life I asked a total, absolute stranger for a date. We'd hardly had 20 words together before I asked her out. She declined, of course, but it was the gaping moment of silence that preceded that jabs me in the gut every now and then. I doubt she was stunned. I think she just wanted to see me squirm for a bit before she replied - give me time to regret. It worked.

But the memory that caught me off guard this morning is one that I'd forgotten for many years. It was third grade. Spring. The teacher told us to write a poem about Spring. I wrote the first thing that came to mind which was a song we'd learned to sing in second grade. It went like this:

"Robin, Robin, singing in the rain
Robin, Robin, Spring has come again"

"Pretty little Robin in the apple tree"

The teacher liked it so much (perhaps it had that familiar ring to it) that she sent it off to a children's literary magazine who published it. I knew none of this until it was printed. My parents had signed a waiver to allow the publication, I might have even received some money, I don't remember. I just remember being horrified that I would be found out - I had stolen this poem from our second grade sing-a-long book. I seem to remember trying to tell my mom that I hadn't written this poem but I don't remember her reaction or if she even understood what I was telling her.

I guess this all came back because it's Spring - the robins are here. I can't remember the third line of the song (and there were other verses but I only used the first one). If you know the rest or where it comes from let me know. I'll put the tune up later when I have time.

I've been playing music with guitarist Bernie Petteway on and off for many years. We had a quartet, The Wasabi Brothers, for several years playing electric/eclectic jazz-sort-of. For the last few years we've been playing sporadically with drummer Ed Butler as the Bernie Petteway Trio.

I'm reluctant to call this a "jazz trio" though we do play jazz. It's more than that so let's just say we're an "improvising ensemble" using a wide array of material from the jazz, popular, and folk traditions as a spring board. This is a fun ensemble to play with and while we tend to draw out of the same pool of tunes from one performance to the next, everything that happens is pretty spontaneous. We play well together.

You can hear us almost every 1st Thursday of the month at the General Store Cafe in downtown Pittsboro, NC - just off the traffic circle. The food there is great and there are wonderful crafts scattered around the restaurant making it a very interesting place visually.

We'll be there this coming Thursday, February 1st, at 8:00 PM for 2 hours of good music for our friends. Hope you'll come! 

UPDATE: Gig canceled due to bad weather. The General Store Cafe will be closed tonight.

UPDATE 2: - In March we'll be performing on the 15th, not the 1st.