RHYTHM AND POETRY WORKSHOPIn May and June I worked with his friend and amazing percussionist/music educator, Josh Robinson, creating music and poetry recordings with middle school kids in Camden, NJ. The residencey program was funded by the Perkins Center For The Arts and the workshops were created and directed by Josh. Josh also had poet, Lamont Dixon, come in and work with the kids on their writing and recitation. Josh brought me in to add harmonic content to the rhythms and poetry that he and the kids created, and to engineer and produce a recording. Key in this was Josh's and my ability to improvise and facillitate the creation of music in a very limited amount of time. I spent one day with four different classes preparing and developing the ideas, one day recording and several hours mixing and printing CDs. We recorded about 80 kids and there were about 80 (30 second to two minute) tracks for me to edit and mix! The kids were fantastic, creative and excited to see their (and our) work come to fruition in a final CD. They really stepped up. Josh and I are really excited about how things turned out and are working on doing more of these residencies. Below are some of the tracks to listen to:
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