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Education and Outreach Programs "What an AMAZING performance! Joe’s visit here was the highlight of my month for sure, and it was incredible to see how mesmerized the students were. Even those kids who don‚t usually like to show that they are interested were tapping their feet and raising their hands!! Joe did a beautiful job of blending a really positive message without preaching, and presenting it a way that was inspiring, entertaining, and totally non-judgemental! Lucky us. I won't forget the day, and neither will our kids. In fact, I have overheard a few conversations amongst the students since his visit.” Bend, Oregon Joe offers a wide variety of outreach programs and presentations for students, kindergarten through college level, and your community at large. He has also instructed at music academies ranging from fiddle to percussion to song school. Assemblies, workshops and 3 to 5 day residencies are available as well as connecting presentations to specific curriculums. We invite you to email us with any questions or inquiries... joe@joecraven.com
Scroll down for a Review/description of one of Joe's assembilies... Please note that Joe's school schedule is not posted on his calendar due to their nature as events not open to the general public... __________________________________ Educators talk about Joe Craven's presentations... "He knows how to get kids involved and keep their attention. Joe is an entertainer in every sense of the word, he has a passion for his music that is contagious to the audience and we think that any school would be lucky to have the opportunity to have Joe perform at their school." Lynn Cooper, Executive Director, Inyo Council for the Arts "Joe was an Artist –in-Residence at CSU, Chico,...visiting and performing for school children, senior citizens, service groups, and even the Chico City Manager and his staff. He also hosted a number of master classes and workshops for musicians that were very well received. Following his appearances for the week, we received many follow-up letters and calls from school principals and community members thanking us for bringing Joe to our community. They all extolled his accessibility and commitment to making the arts understandable and enjoyable for everyone. Joe is known for his ability to connect with the audience. Whether for a dozen kids in third grade or an adult post-graduate seminar, he has an uncanny knack for putting everyone at ease while he guides them to a greater appreciation for the arts…and, he is always encouraging everyone to participate, make their own music, and have fun while doing it.""""''" –Dan DeWayne, Director, Chico Performances, California State University – Chico "The challenge of presenting music to deaf students was beautifully met by Joe, who without prior experience with deafness, innately seemed to understand how to stimulate alternative senses to hearing. Joe was able to engage and involve the deaf and hearing students alike, using audience participation and visual aids, such as a zig-zag zebra print to represent sound patterens. Every child played and felt the vibrations of many world instruments, and followed and created rhythms and beats with the group. It has been a springboard for an interest in music that is unusual for most deaf students. It was an exciting, interactive presentation, clearly enjoyed by all of the children and adults fortunate enough to be there. I am very grateful that all of us here at John Muir had the opportunity of experiencing the talents and magic of Joe Craven." Kris Waters, Teacher Kindergarten Class for Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing John Muir Elementary School, Berkeley, CA “Joe’s demonstration, using a variety of found objects, was delightfully creative. The audience appeared astonished when, after Joe demonstrated considerable skill on the violin, that he admitted that he had never been formally trained. His approach to music as a form of communication, the existence of which is not reliant on the availability of classical instruments, was refreshing from a cultural, socioeconomic, and musical point of view. We would be delighted to have Joe visit our school again.” Robert I. Hurwitz, Acting Dean School of Music - University of Oregon - Eugene "From the moment he began the show, Joe had the kids in the palm of his hand. Joe knows how to get the kids involved and how to keep their attention. Lots of audience participation that included a look at some rare and fasinating instruments that kept everyone, including staff, glued to his every move. You never know what he might come up with next, as his show is spontaneous and different everytime. This is an exceptional assembly for all ages. Joe grabs the teachable moment to introduce ethical concepts such as the disapline required to achieve mastery on an instrument, and how music can help you become your best self." Connie Kretschmer-Music Teacher Silver Springs, Elementary School - Nevada
Other comments... "His work is born out of respect and reverence and seeks to honor the creative energy in everyone." "Educational, inspirational and entertaining, Joe Craven immediately commanded the attention of my 7th and 8th grade band/chorus students with his virtuosic playing and quickly established a good and enthusiastic rapport with them from the beginning to the end." Mr. Craven's demonstrations of various instruments from around the world and his playing on found objects were highlights. "My students still do some of the hands-on exercises that they learned during Joe's workshop." "Kids were tapping and clapping all the way down the hall on the way back to class and dancing like Joe on the playground after the assembly." "Joe's performance expressed his passion for music and his message that music can make you what you want to be." "My students benefited from Joe's comments concerning discipline in pursuing a passion, regardless of what the passion may be."
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Students talk about Joe Craven's presentations... "You helped me become a musician." "I play the fiddle now because you put one in my hands and said I could. Thank you, Mr. Craven." I'm a life drummer now. Thank you Mr. Joe! "...you inspyred me to make some of my own insterments...thank you for comeing." "I like Mr. Joe. He is different. He is cool. I learned alot. When is he comming back?" "I'm realy crav'in some of that Joe Craven kind of music..."
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Graduates of the Migrant Scholars Summer Program 2005 at California State University - Fresno ____________________________________________________________ By request from prospective clients, the following assembly review by parent Matt Rosenberg of Seattle, WA <www.rosenblog.com>, gives a description of what an elementary school might experience with one of Joe's presentations... "Have you ever played your face? You should. I was so reminded yesterday by a remarkable musician named Joe Craven, who performed a music education workshop/concert at the school my chlidren attend. I have since been following Joe's advice. Use two fingers on each hand, alternately hollow up your mouth, then widen it, and observe. As with a Nigerian talking drum, you can wring actual tonalities from your face. Joe Craven made a room full of kids and a few grown-ups beat their cheeks into music in the course of a marvellous hour-long seminar and demonstration of rhythm, melody, musical tradition and innovation. Joe is a multi-instrumentalist specializing in percussion, violin, mandolin and a slew of ethnic and homemade stringed instruments. He has played for 17 years with "Dawg Music" folk-jazz mandolin maestro David Grisman, and recorded or performed with artists including Jerry Garcia, The Persuasions, Maria Muldaur, and Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and bluegrass stars Darol Anger and Mike Marshall. Joe is based in Northern California, but came up to Puget Sound for last weekend's Winteregrass Festival in Tacoma. He's got a major gig at Town Hall in Seattle this Friday (see below), part of a busy touring schedule.. I'm glad to know he'll be de-mystifying music for lots of elementary school students in special workshops along the way. In the Grisman band, Joe plays a lot of percussion, and fiddle. But I (and a bunch of students, some teachers and a few other parents) got see his mastery of varied percussive, stringed, vocal and electronic instruments and techniques. He played a stringed device made from a turkey roasting pan, an exhaust pipe, and wood (very sonorously I might add); plus another fashioned from a hospital bedpan. Joe also plays oud, quatro, saz, balalaika, plus other stringed devices, not to mention waste-baskets, coffee cans, toy telephones, and if you're really lucky, his raincoat. Joe began the show with an old-fashioned fiddle lament, which worked its way into a frenzied hoedown. His foot-stompin' fiddle got the 1st-3rd graders clapping hard, and spontaneously. He then took the solo acoustic fiddle tune into a rock-blues electric guitar-styled rave-up. A big, if highly informal nod to the Clapton and Hendrix legacies - pretty awesome. Not a lotta fret space on that acoustic fiddle neck, either. But enough. The kids went nuts. Then he seamlessly segued into some fierce human beat-box/mouth-right-on-the-mike percussion virtuosity, leading back into more acoustic fiddle pryotechnics. The kids were "Yee-Haw"-ing at length. The seminar continued, with Joe demonstrating the role of rhythm in daily life, and the beginnings of life. Like the sound of a baby's in-utero heartbeat, contrasted against mom's heartbeat; then the popping sounds of birth. Followed by a person walking and a lawn spinkler hissing. Joe vocalized this into his electronic sampler: Clomp, clomp, clomp, comp. Hiss, hiss, hiss, hiss; In other words: 1 2 3 4. 1234 Then played some very bluesy-jazzy mandolin licks over the lawn-sprinkler beat box rhythms. Followed by a freshly-created vocal tape loop of some simple spoken words, meant to show the melody of the human voice: "If you loop it, which is what happens in music, you can begin to hear the melody." As this was repeated over and over and over, the kids: a) cracked up; and b) totally got it, as did I. The rise and fall of the human voice DOES contain inherent melody. Joe used this looped backdrop as base upon which to layer some more piquant stringed melodies. Seeing, creating, is forgetting the NAME of what you're working with, Joe said. Like Picasso, Joe explained to the kids. One day Pablo looked at an old rusty bicycle, welded the handlebars to the seat and called it a bull's head. And so it became something new, because he was able to forget what it was he'd been seeing before. Similarly, Joe said: forget about always playing the "right" notes - just feel a rhythm and bang it out. You can work on getting it perfect later on. If that's your aim. Joe sought and found a volunteer who'd never played an instrument before. This 5-year-old girl was up there sawing away at Joe's fiddle, unfretted, first with his help and then on her own, while he played perfectly-in-tune mandolin melodies. It sounded quite nice, altogether. Kids walk around around wearing "No Fear" skateboard fashions, but too often they're "absolutely terrified" to let go and make music, Joe said. We need to incorporate making music into our daily lives, he emphasized. Joe reminded us how many folks have instruments gathering dust, and how much inspiration is to be found in waste cans, coffee cans, plus your face, belly, and thighs. He's quite right. At home, I recently noticed that a thick rubber band stetched from a doorknob to a small lock handle above produced some beautifully resonant sounds, somewhat similar to the Gambian harp called a dusongoni. The tonalities varied according to where I plucked the rubber band. I jammed for a while, then my kids. There were some other high points of Joe's remarkable show. These included a percussion-laden take of Johhny Cash's "Got Rhythm," a shoeshine boy's song, highlighting Joe's rich, bluesy vocals, with fine brushwork on a very small plastic garbage receptacle. Plus, a remarkable percussion and melodic improv on and around an Indian claypot, or Ghatam, an open-necked, gourd-shaped object used to great advantage by performers in guitarist John McLaughlin's Shakti group, and other traditional Indian music ensembles. Also, a fine calypso vocal accompanied by snappy rhythms fashioned from a double-sided, donkey's jaw-bone; a "lowdown on the hoedown" rap tribute to the history of American folk music; and the blues tune "Corrina, Corrina" played on a uke-like "commodium" - constructed by Joe from a gleaming silver (and wholly disinfected) hospital bedpan, melded to an (eight-stringed) mandolin neck, pot top, and fork. Joe's a hoot - and way funky, to boot." __________________________________________ Currently, there are six different program offerings. Here are three examples... Program Sample 1
FINDING THE ARTIST WITHIN YOURSELF Demonstrating his own love of music as the catalyst, Joe shows students how the process of finding artistic passion can motivationally spark and drive them in any endeavor towards enrichment, empowerment and excellence. A dynamic and creative presentation of 1) concepts, 2) demonstrations and 3) hands-on opportunities, is given amidst a broad setting of musical instruments from all over the world and objects from our everyday life. Concepts:
Highlights:
Facility: Gymnasiums / cafeterias = (assemblies) and classroom = (intensives & hands on) Grade level: K - 12 and adult; presentation & activities adjusted appropriately for age group(s) Number of students: Small classroom (intensives) to entire school (assemblies) Pending travel logistics, Joe provides a small sound system for assemblies, workshops and residencies. _____________________________________________ Program Sample 2 WHAT IS FOLK MUSIC? UNCOMMON MUSIC OF COMMON PEOPLE
In this presentation, Joe introduces the concept of teaching students folk music as a way of expressing, documenting and preserving their everyday life experiences, thus creating "personal music diaries" for themselves. A copy of the brochure from an exhibition Joe curated on folk music in 1981 (available on request), highlights the "ballad" and is a model for this presentation. Joe demonstrates how the process of folk music works which, for him, are pieces learned from the aural tradition of observation - handed down person to person and generation to generation. Tunes and songs embellished and altered with different versions through time ultimately creating new music altogether. Music doesn't belong to individuals so much as it belongs to cultures and to humanity. When you are learning other people's music you are learning your own. When you discover their's, it is a foundation in discovering your own! Concepts: Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm !!! Writing, singing, exploring instruments, expression, practice, styles, application and performance The power of simplicity Demonstrations: Hands-on workshops: Facility: Gymnasiums / cafeterias = (assemblies) and classroom =( intensives & hands on) Grade level: Number of students: Pending travel logistics, Joe provides a small sound system for assemblies, workshops and residencies. ____________________________________________ Program Sample 3 RHYTHM AND GROOVES... Joe presents rhythm as the most significant thing in music. Through rhythmic phrasing you can say powerful things with just one pitch (note) or chord. Mr. Craven presents the concept, components and importance of rhythm as a life force, both visually and aurally (sight & sound). He introduces rhythm to students as a way of measuring time and space and then demonstrates how it can be perceived musically. From bouncing basketballs to playing found objects such as cans, bottles, books and school desks... walking and skipping to vocal and body percussion, Mr. Craven discusses and demonstrates the power of rhythm and how it is expressed through movement to communicate, as a language, information and artistic expression through mediums such as painting, music and dance. Components: Pulse, pattern, tempo, groove, accents, time line, back beats, downbeats, duple & triple meter (even & odd numbered beats), cross rhythms and polyrhythms. Demonstrations: Rhythm on everyday objects, oneself, and percussion and string instruments from all over the world. Hands-on workshops: Learning and playing various rhythms on a variety of percussion instruments with others in the class. Exploring the social importance of playing music. Facility: Grade level: Number of students: Pending travel logistics, Joe will provide a small sound system for assemblies, workshops and residencies. © 1999-2006 Blender Logic Arts, Inc. unless otherwise noted.
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