“The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery - not over nature but of ourselves.” Rachel Carson

I was very pleased to see the amount of attention and action that was generated by the celebration of Earth Day last week. When I think of the many efforts to identify and formalize national days devoted to a certain subject that have popped up in my lifetime, few rival the importance or long range impact of being good stewards of our blue planet.

I think we have all come a long way in our awareness of the difference each of us can make in taking better care of the earth. At The Music Settlement we have worked hard to be greener, with efforts that range from a shift to mostly electronic communication and information distribution, to replacing incandescent light bulbs with energy efficient fluorescent ones. But the change really starts with each of us, and it is requires diligence to change habits and ways of life.

When I look at the environmental movement from that personal perspective, I certainly see progress being made. As a youngster, I recall that my family often spent pleasant summer weekend days engaged in an activity known as the “Sunday drive,” a now-archaic effort that has been replaced by malls and DVD players and gas at nearly $4 a gallon, or so it seems. Now don’t get me wrong, aimlessly driving around the countryside in a carbon monoxide spewing old station wagon is hardly the best way to “go green,” unless of course you mean me sitting in the way back seat, sucking in fumes and getting green in the gills. But I distinctly remember that even if our drive took us out into the wilds of Cattaraugus County, NY (and that’s pretty wild), it would not be unusual to see lots of trash along the side of the road. I know this is hard to believe for some of you younger folks, but back then the average American treated the shoulder of the road as their own personal trash can. The unfortunate convergence of the fast food craze with the automobile really exacerbated this, by the way; cups and wrappers and napkins would find their way out the window and onto the flora without a second thought! Hard to believe now, isn’t it? At some level, the country’s relatively successful campaign against littering was one of the first real beachheads in the battle against pollution.

Nowadays, of course, we realize there is a lot more required for success than just the level of behavioral modification that resulted from the national Litter Bug campaign. If all we do is remember to bring in from the car the wrappers of our Big Mac and toss them in the trash can, it won’t be enough, to which the ever rising mountains of landfills across this country attest. Every one of us needs to change our habits and our lifestyles. If our conspicuous consumption is not altered, history tells us the result will not be pretty. Indeed, I was watching the history of the Earth Day movement on American Experience on PBS last week, and there was a revelatory message that hit home with me on several fronts.

If you happened to see the show, it featured first person interviews with many of the folks at the vanguard of the movement in the early seventies. Many of them were “hippy-dippy” counterculture folks with odd names and even odder dress codes, who nonetheless worked through the systems and the hearts of America to foster real change. They saw it as a higher calling and were spurred on by concerns and events that focused attention on the gathering evidence that our world was sending us an urgent SOS. Interestingly, many of the individuals also mentioned that a seminal moment in the movement was when Apollo 8 astronauts sent back to Earth the famous photo of Earthrise, the first image of our planet taken by man from outside its orbit. This life-changing artwork forever redefined our planet as finite - a small, fragile, dot in the celestial heavens, and one whose balance could easily and irreparably be upset.

This wasn’t the only reference in the PBS show to the central place of art in the story of mankind and the environment. A researcher who was one of the first to identify the threat of catastrophic climate change cited the example of other great cultures on our planet that appear to have fallen due to unwise environmental practices. As he rattled off the examples of Incan, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman civilizations, each was accompanied by a photo of all that remains of their glory: artworks, great and small. Those who look for irony in this life would be quick to note that art and culture not only inspire us to great things, but they also may be ultimately all that is left to tell of our passing. The rest of us can cling to the fact that great art represents truth that transcends and inspires; it’s something that raises our sights and opens our eyes when mere words and actions fall short. We just need to be open to the message.

Let’s hope that our new worldwide civilization can grasp the lessons contained in that photo of Earth before our legacy is one of silent structures and colossal statues to events long forgotten and buried in the sand. We should incorporate good stewardship of the planet into everything we do, making everyday Earth Day for our little blue dot in the universe.

Have a great week!

“The history of an art is the history of masterwork, not of failures, or mediocrity.” Ezra Pound

The Music Settlement is in full celebration mode this month as we find ourselves surrounded by reminders of the impact we have made throughout our history on the people of our community. It’s an interesting alignment of the stars, because this time of year is traditionally when our students are presenting recitals and performances that exhibit their growth as musicians, and many of our faculty members are out performing as well.

There are many things for us to be really excited about as we move through the month. On Wednesday the 21st, a representation of instructors, staff, board members, and friends will join us in Columbus as we gather to support our beloved Director of Early Childhood Education, Sylvia Easley, when she will be awarded the Governor’s Award for the Arts in Arts Education. I wrote in detail about the OAC committee’s selection of Sylvia for this prestigious honor in a previous blog, but I want to spend a few more minutes on it because she has meant so much to so many people throughout her 44 years of service at The Music Settlement. It doesn’t matter where I go or who I talk to across the area, there will be someone in the crowd with a connection to Sylvia, and they always say the most wonderful things! She has been a key player in the early development of so many people, either through our programs or through her own advocacy, that she truly can be called one of the most influential people in Northeast Ohio over the past half century. That’s something to celebrate!

We also should raise a big cheer for our jazz faculty and students, who continue to reap accolades for their mastery of this unique American art form. Last week, piano faculty member Jackie Warren (who was chosen as “Best Keyboardist” by the readers of Cleveland Scene magazine this year), was a featured performer in the Women in Jazz concert at Mount Zion Church. Our Settlement Jazz Orchestra (SJO), Jazz @ The Music Settlement (J@MS) ensemble, and the Jazz Impact ensemble were featured prominently at the Tri-C JazzFest where they enjoyed master classes and blew the roof off in performance.

At The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) earlier this month, four members of our cello faculty were featured in the Viva & Gala series performance by renowned Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen. Nick Diodore, Ida Mercer, Julie Meyers King, and Robert Nicholson made up four of the seven members of I Cellisti, the resident ensemble of the Cleveland Cello Society, which joined Mr. Karttunen in a truly magical evening of performance that ranged from J. S. Bach to Kaija Saariaho. It is our hope that we will continue to partner with CMA and the roster of international performing artists they bring in for their concert series as we launch our World Music curriculum this summer.

April and May are months in which many of our students perform in the culmination of a year of dedicated music study. Hardly an evening or weekend will go by without the sound of accomplishment ringing through the campus; it’s a sound I never get enough of! I guess it’s particularly fitting that April is the month that The Music Settlement was founded so long ago.

By the end of April, we will have begun our 98th year of providing meaningful personal experiences to our community through the joy of music. When Almeda Adams, an accomplished vocalist and educator who happened to be blind since the age of 6 months, founded The Cleveland Music School Settlement in 1912, she must have had future Aprils in mind - rooms and hallways full of music made by folks of all ages, on all manners of instruments and in all kinds of styles. Won’t you join in the fun?

Have a great week!

Busy as a one-armed man pasting on wallpaper

“…Busy as a one-armed man… pasting on wallpaper.” O. Henry

Most people try to plan their lives so that the pace they create is bearable and the demands on their time and productivity are balanced and reasonable - but not me. When most families decide to schedule a major vacation during their kid’s spring break from school, logic would suggest that they clear the decks up until departure time to allow for appropriate planning and preparation. You put in a solid period of work at the office and at home that allows you to feel like you’re on top of things before you whirl away to vacationland. You leave your nights and weekends leading up to the trip in the family “truckster” free for itinerary planning, packing, and calm periods of reflection and meditation - but not me! Instead, I filled the 11 days leading up to this spring’s halcyon holiday with nonstop events and activities that left me barely packed as we headed out the door.

First, there was the wedding thing. Now, please don’t get me wrong: your son’s wedding is a blessed, life-altering event, but it does require a bit of your time and energy. It was a beautiful event that perfectly reflected their thoughtful and fun-loving personalities, but like all family weddings, it absorbed all the attention and energy of those around it like a giant sponge. A great time was had by all, but when I woke up the following day I was startled to remember that I had agreed to report for duty that afternoon to judge short subject films for the Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF) for the next eight days straight! Just to make sure we weren’t too comfortable, we had also agreed to take care of my son’s dog (Atlas, the 100 lb. Labrador retriever) for the next five days while the wedded couple enjoyed their honeymoon.

So, to recap: that’s three days, one wedding, a house full of relatives, a very large black dog on the way, and eight straight days in the dark coming right around the corner…

In the interest of fairness, I need to state the following: Atlas is an absolute sweetheart. He’s a very smart (one might even say devious), somewhat overweight (one might say fat), happy older dog that was rescued by two very loving people who adore him, and so do we. He also gets along famously with our greyhound, also a rescued pup of older vintage, the two are inseparable. The challenge is that they are both large dogs, they both shed like the dickens (we went through two or three lint rollers in a week), and - in the words of my wife - “Atlas is a world class opportunist.” Under no circumstances do you leave him unsupervised within the vicinity of anything that can be interpreted as food. Likewise, be aware of his uncanny ability to choose a moment when all are distracted to sneak away and surprise us all with a surprisingly light-footed leap onto any nearby piece of upholstered furniture. And I’m not going to even get into the slobbering issue (ick!). Needless to say, the old boy kept us on our toes, but we were smiling the whole time, because like any dog worth his kibble, he is truly a charming rogue.

But who was I to complain? For most of Atlas’s time with us I merely walked him in the morning (two big dogs was a handful) and patted his big old head at the end of the night as I stumbled in from watching shorts at CIFF. The rest of my week consisted of working at The Music Settlement until 4pm or so, and then racing downtown to watch seven to eight short films a night and maybe another full length flick or two. If you’ve read this message before, you know what a great fan I am of CIFF, but this year I had an insider’s glimpse of the process like never before. The crowds were larger than ever (more than 71,000 attended!), and they screened more films than ever (300 plus), but it still ran like clockwork. I, however, ran more like a clock that needed new batteries. By the time the weekend rolled around, I was watching an average of nine individual films a day, counting shorts; still small change for a CIFF veteran!

To recap again: by the end of the week from Hades, wedding a distant memory, relatives shipped off to wherever, dog gone (doggone?), home chores and duties neglected, more than 100 movies seen, nine awards given to shorts, no packing done, no idea what day or time it was, and a plane to catch.

I then rise from the ashes and search everywhere for the shorts and polo shirts I hadn’t seen since Labor Day and throw it all in a suitcase and prepare myself for six days in the theme parks of Orlando, Florida (yippee?). Surprisingly, I take everything I need and things are absolutely fantastic in the world of Disney, where “magic” isn’t just a word, it’s the law. But there is no doubt I have some overlaps from the hectic days before heading to the sunshine, such as the gnawing sense that, like a good CIFF judge, I should be scoring the Muppets in 3-D movie for content and character development, and the strange compulsion to yell at Pluto when he sits in a chair during the Breakfast with the Characters event. I even end up running into my sister and her husband at the Hollywood Studios theme park (won’t those pesky relatives ever leave?). But the really odd part is that the whole crazy 14 days will forever make up some of the very best moments I will ever experience, and also some of the craziest.

To recap one more time: 18 days, one son married, one daughter-in-law gained, one dog watched like a hawk, dozens of flicks seen and miles driven, hundreds of theme park miles walked, tons of photos taken, millions of smiles logged. But I wouldn’t trade any of it for a billion dollars!

It’s good to be back- Have a great week!