S.A.M. Workshop Weekend 2016

Creative Ability Deveopment in Action

Collaboration

My Honors Recital Kiddos 

A Moment at the Tour Group Recital 

Rhythm Machine

The little ones in class

SAM's Creative Ability Development Trainees-- minus me

A selfie of the trainees and Alice

Part of the workshop committee and Alice

Last night I slept for eight full hours. This morning I consumed a reasonable amount of caffeine. I went to yoga and had something healthy for breakfast, as opposed to a pumpkin waffle with whipped cream, brown sugar, pecans and maple syrup.

I'm doing all these healthy things again because the workshop is over.

We had an amazing, amazing weekend. Our guest clinician Alice Kay Kanack, arrived Thursday night. We did teacher training in Creative Ability Development on Friday. We went to dinner Friday night. We had 41 kids and 30 teachers at the workshop on Saturday. All the kids got a mini institute. They got a masterclass, a group lesson, an origami class while parents soaked up info from Alice, and each child got an improvisation class with Alice. We had our annual SAM meeting.

We had a lovely faculty and student honors recital after lunch, and a creative ability development concert at the close of the day.

Here's the story. Creative ability development uses improvisation, but that's not the total deal. The end goal is kids and adults using both sides of their brains to meet their potential.

Alice has a music school in Rochester, New York. It's a whole program. Her kids are graduating to conservatory and music school, but also doing amazing work in everything they do. Great doctors. Creative lawyers. It's undocumented but fabulous success.

A bunch of those kids came from New York and a sister program in Chicago, to show us what it's all about. It's everything Shinichi Suzuki wanted. Good kids with good hearts playing expressively with good tone and good intonation. Connecting together with music, through improvisation. Their whole hour concert was improvised.

The kids stayed for pizza and what else? A brief trip to Nickelodeon Universe at the MOA. Thank you to the families who hosted them!

On Sunday, we continued our teacher training with Alice.

We all got a wealth of experience and ideas to take back to our studios. I also got 17 new friends. Well--to be honest a few were already friends--but you can't sit in a room with your instrument and go round and round the room doing improvisation exercises for ten hours without gaining some love and trust. We were all on the high wire. Alice's rules? There's no such thing as a mistake, applaud everyone and be quiet for everyone, and never criticize a friend.

There's no way to completely say thanks to everyone, but here's my best shot:

Cindy Uhlemann --Workshop Chairperson--my best friend during workshop season. She gives and gives and gives.
MJ Glawe --  all the website info and the registration tool. All the email blasts and communication, the poster and registration desk.
Carolyn Borgan -- checks for clinicians and food and everything.
Beatriz Aguerrevere -- the amazing workshop program--the booklet with EVERTHING! (My dream).
Cherie Bjur --day of registration checklists and name tags--totally pro and clear and wonderful.
Randi Kvam Hellman and Jill Thomas --food, food, and more food.  And coffee and God bless you, half and half. They planned all the food.
Meredith Vaughan--staffing the volunteers in her usual fashion.

Karen Stiles, Mary Gustafson, Cheryl Mahin, and Jill Thomas for hosting kids. And waiting up for them and getting them to and from the airport and their rides.

Beth Turco and Linda Trygstad for judging the honors recital kids and providing such lovely feedback to all of the children.

Our clinicians: Alice Kay Kanack, Lisa Hirschmugl, Erika Blanco, Susan Crawford, Wendy Tangen-Foster, Suzanne Greer, Annette Lee, myself, Alan Johnston, and Adrianna O'Brien. Special thanks to Annette for accompanying the recital with late notice.  Pianists don't need accompanists so you can maybe see how I forgot about that. . .

Rochelle Mazze, Julia Bartsch, Jill Thomas and the origami helpers--you know who you are and you know what frogs you did or didn't practice making ahead of the class. We survived. I used to have an anxiety dream that I was playing a jury in front of the professors and I hadn't practiced enough. I now have the dream that I'm in a room with 40 kids and I have no idea how to fold a piece of green paper into a frog shape. I'm joking, it was a very fun hour. Which seemed like 20 hours.

Keyboards--thanks for bringing keyboards, Calvin, Mary G, Jill and Mary Kay O'Neil.
Calvin--for helping out with the keyboards and every other random thing on Saturday.
Adrianna and David Holmes for the loaner cellos.

A special thanks to Karen Stiles and of course Cindy, who stayed till the bitter end on Sunday. I have a special appreciation for folks who stay till the very last juice container is out of the fridge and every chair is stacked, every keyboard loaded and every room locked and the little half and halfs are collected and the miscellaneous stuff is all loaded into the car. We did it. Every last napkin and program.

It seems like people are always saying there is no growth without struggle. Alice preached it this weekend. We have to work out our own salvation. I'm not sure I can ever do another workshop like this again, but I must say I grew. Everything we do we learn--how to be organized, how to communicate with folks with different communication styles. A million ways we learn and grow. I'm sorry for the moments I was grouchy, but I think we did pretty darn good.

God bless everyone for their help and work to bring this weekend to our students and teachers. I have nothing but love, love and more love for this group. My kids loved it--I hope all the kids loved it. I loved it, I hope all the teachers loved it.

Amen. See you next year. I'm not even entertaining those little thoughts of who we should have and how things should go. . . really.