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Learning Curve features great teachers and their students. Legendary cellist Jeffrey Solow gives a master class, students get professional training in a Broadway-style production of “Carousel,” and an artist works with kids in an innovative after school program. Plus a special web-only feature – behind the scenes with The Montclair Art Museum docents training program.
Learning Curve was nominated for two 2008 Mid-Atlantic Emmys: for Outstanding Magazine Program and for Outstanding Education/Schools Program Feature for Carousel.
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Students from all over New Jersey converge upon Newark every summer to put on a show. Young actors, dancers, orchestra musicians, and stage techs ranging in age from six to 23 audition for the chance to get a top-notch educational experience. According to director Cynthia Meryl, it’s the closest thing to a real Broadway experience you can get as a student. In 2007, a production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s classical musical, “Carousel” marked the tenth anniversary of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center’s (NJPAC) Summer Musical Program, done in collaboration with the New Jersey Youth Theatre Company.
State of the Arts producer Eric Schultz visits the production in rehearsal, backstage and on opening night. He talks to the kids and all the seasoned theatrical pros running the show. Director Cynthia Meryl, who has directed these summer productions from the start, obviously has the admiration and affection from the entire cast and crew. Schultz also talks to graduates of the Summer Musical Program who have gone on to become professionals, including Melissa Miller, who since graduating form the NJPAC summer program has appeared on Broadway, on the NBC television program Ed, and numerous other films and theatrical productions.
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Billy and Julie from Carousel
Carousel (2007)
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Cellist Jeffrey Solow has some of the most devoted and successful students around. State of the Arts producer Eric Schultz speaks with Solow about what it takes to be a teacher, what he learned from his own teacher, the great Russian cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, and how he balances his performing career with teaching.
Viewers will see Solow teaching a master class sponsored by the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, coaching his college students at Temple University, and in rehearsals and performance playing the Shostakovich Cello Concerto with the Princeton Symphony.
Cellist Jeffrey Solow maintains a busy schedule traveling throughout the world as a recitalist, soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. He was born and raised in Los Angeles where he studied with the distinguished cellist Gabor Rejto. Later, he earned a degree in Philosophy from UCLA while studying with and, later, assisting the legendary Gregor Piatigorsky at USC.
Solow has recorded for the Columbia, ABC, Centaur, Delos, Kleos, Everest, and Telefunken labels and two of his recordings were nominated for Grammy Awards.
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Jeffrey Solow
Solow teaching a masterclass
Solow teaching at Tremple University
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The stereotype of the artist is a painter, working alone in his studio. People don’t expect artists to be out in the community, and art schools don’t prepare them for it. The Community Artists Training Series (CARTS) seeks to change that, returning artists to a more central role in society. In partnership with the Institute for Arts and Humanities Education, Rutgers University has developed a statewide artists-residency program. Artists work in many different community settings, from senior citizen centers and AIDS hospices, to teen centers and after school programs. Key to the program is the presence of artist-mentors who train new artists to work with members of the community.
State of the Arts producer Susan Wallner visits the Trenton After School Program where Trenton painter Ricardo Coke is a resident CARTS artist. Coke says that his art is a mixture of music and color (he is also a trumpet player). Wallner also speaks with the co-director of CARTS, Isabelle Nazario, Associate Vice President for Academic and Public Partnerships in the Arts and Humanities at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and Tina Blackledge, executive director of the Trenton After School Program, a private organization working with K-7 students in Trenton’s West Ward.
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Trenton After School Program Love Train Performance
Love Train mural (detail)
Artist Ricardo Coke
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"Docent" comes from the Latin docere, to instruct; and for decades, museums have relied on volunteer docents to be tour guides, instructors, and ambassadors to their collections. But who are these docents, and how does one become one? State of the Arts producer Amber Edwards looks at the Docent Program at the Montclair Art Museum, and discovers that the stereotypical "docent lady" – a socialite of a certain age with time to fill – no longer applies. In Montclair, a brigade of accomplished, educated, and committed women – and men – has embraced the challenge of educating themselves and visitors of all types and ages about how to look at art. As one docent – retired from public relations and marketing for a pharmaceutical company – puts it, "Now, art is my life."
To schedule a group tour or for more about the Montclair Art Museum’s Docent Program, contact the Education Department at education@montclairartmuseum.org.
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Docent Marilyn Sorken conducts a tour
Montclair Art Museum Docent Peg Kenselaar
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On NJN1: Thursday, September 3, 2009 @ 8:00 pm
Preview
