Arts Education in Our Schools Month

Celebrating March: "Arts Education in Our Schools" Month

Celebrate the Arts!

March is here and it’s time to celebrate Arts Education!  March is Maine’s “Arts Education In Our Schools” month.    Similar to our Virtual Fine Arts Night last June, students from Camden Hills Regional High School will be posting works of art: musical performances and visual projects to this page on our website.  Our goal is to have a new post each school day in March – so that the community has something new to look forward to - as we work our way out of winter, out of the pandemic, and towards Spring and new beginnings.

Enjoy the musical performances and the art!

 

March 1st: "Had it All" by Ruben Feldman. Ruben created this song, based on "Happier" by Marshmello and Bastille. This is Ruben's take on a tropical house genre. Enjoy!

Listen to "Had it All" by Ruben Feldman

 

March 2nd: Grace Yanz performs "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen. He wrote the poem in 1966 and recorded the song in 1967 in his album "Songs of Leonard Cohen." He wrote it about Suzanne Verdal and the platonic love affair that they had in Montreal. Enjoy!


 

March 3rd: Alyssa Bland sings "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz while playing the ukulele. "I'm Yours" was originally released in 2008 and is about living in the moment. Enjoy!


 

March 4th: Isaiah Doble the One-Man Kitchen Symphony. Isaiah initially heard this song on Instagram. He loved the creative style and simple body percussion. After watching masterful Mayonnaise jar solo that was featured in a virtual band performance, he had the idea to do his own version of the song, with kitchen appliances! He does not own any rights to this song, it is a cover of "Producer Man" by Lyn Lapid. Please enjoy!



March 5th: Audrey Leavitt sings "She Used To Be Mine," a piece written and made popular by Sara Bareilles. The song was later transformed into a musical number where it was played in the musical "The Waitress." The song talks about how one can be so focused on their imperfections in life, that the good things can often be lost.



March 8th: The CHRHS Brass Ensemble. This piece is "Mr. Blue Sky" by the Electric Light Orchestra, performed and arranged by the CHRHS Brass Ensemble. Ruben Feldman (not shown) is on drums as well as recording the audio. He also edited the piece to make the video! On the left playing trumpet is Katherine O'Brien and on her right is Lincoln Pierce playing trumpet as well. Next to Lincoln is Caleb Wight playing tuba and Joel Hokkanen playing trombone. This piece is very upbeat and such a joy to perform for everyone!



March 9th: Ruben Feldman and Tommy Eagar. This song is a remix of “Cities,” by the artist Throttle. He recently released an acoustic cover of the song, so my idea was to combine aspects of the original (EDM) track with the acoustic cover. Tommy and I recorded the vocals using a zoom field recorder (which isn’t the best for vocals, but it worked well enough) in the midi lab after school, with Tommy singing along to the instrumental track I had made. I produced the song in Ableton Live. The instrumentation/production is completely original. This piece was a lot of fun to make, and I think it turned out really well! It’s always more fun making music with someone else involved.

Listen to "Cities Remix Feat. Tommy" by Ruben Feldman

March 10th: The JAKS String Quartet performs The Pete Dance by the Danish String Quartet. JAKS is made up of high school students from all over Maine who just love playing music together. Kat O’Brien and Joshua Rosenthal play violin, Anna Berkes on cello, and Sophia Scheck on viola. Enjoy!




March 11th: This is Audrey Leavitt and Julianna Day singing “The Space Between”. This song is from the Disney Musical:Descendants and it is meant to be a feel good song between friends. The song talks about how no matter how far friends are from either other, they will always be friends at heart. A special thanks to Ruben Feldman for putting it all together!




March 12th: Freshman, Elise Mahar playing Londonderry Air on the trombone. Notice that Elise is following the CDC guidelines for safe indoor performance. She is wearing an instrumental mask and the trombone is outfitted with a bell cover. In addition to playing music, Elise is an avid soccer player who also enjoys the birthday cakes that her grandfather makes for her! Enjoy!




March 15th: Ina Wolovitz plays the Toccata movement from Debussy's Pour le piano suite. Some of you may have heard me play part of it on the piano in the lobby, so now you can listen to the whole thing! It was written between 1896 and 1901 and is known as marking a turning point in Debussy's career.




March 16th: Lucas Marriner-Ward performs “Again” by Doris Day. This is an original arrangement which Lucas had created as part of an online challenge back in the Fall; the task was to create a visual/musical experience. The visual effect took some time to achieve! We hope you enjoy this exceptional creative endeavor!




March 17th: Kalen Hixson plays piano. The song is Main Theme - Animal Crossing: New Horizons.




March 18th: Emmit Dayhoof performs an original composition on guitar.




March 19th: Aaron Mahoney's Interstellar Theme Suite-Pipe Organ Performance. From the movie Interstellar, a medley of Day One and No Time for Caution arranged for and performed with pipe organ by Aaron Mahoney.




March 22nd: Noelle Delano sings "Stay" by Rhianna




March 23rd: Ezra LeMole, Junior. Performing the exact solo from the Maynard Ferguson Album of Coconut Champagne.




March 24th: Featured today is Nate Stanley playing a Russian waltz called “On the Hills of Manchuria” by Ilya Shatrov, on the bayan. The bayan (Russian: бая́н, IPA: [bɐˈjan]) is a type of chromatic button accordion developed in Russia in the early 20th century and named after the 11th-century bard Boyan.




March 25th: This short song, Titled “Break the Law?” Written and performed by Joshua Kohlstrom, Combines a “barbershop quartet/choir style”, as well as short story format to create something fun and enjoyable as a pick-me-up for anyone who only has a minute of time to spare..




March 26th: Aeddon Evans is using his school iPad and the program, virtualpiano.net, to play his rendition of Lost Boy. Try it yourself! https://virtualpiano.net/




March 26th part 2: Elias Porter and Julianna Day perform Eva Cassidy’s version of “Autumn Leaves.”




March 26th part 3: Owen Markowitz - on drums!




March 29th: Isabella Kinney singing and playing “Where The Skies Are Blue” by The Lumineers!




March 31th: Ending our Arts in Education Month is Caleb Wight!




    Advanced Drawing and Painting class

    We've been exploring various drawing processes, inspired by artists Alberto Giacommetti, Willem deKooning, and Bryce Marden.

    Students are pictured working on non-objective "Flux" drawings, using charcoal, chalk and paint. The object was to draw, then play with covering and revealing parts of the drawing by adding white paint, then more drawing, paint, and drawing. The drawings use expressive marks, and show a sense of time and process.


    Big Art class

    Students are currently working on block printed banners and posters based on an article from the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. To start thinking about effective use of positive and negative space for the prints, we worked with abstract black and white painting, applying the Gestalt principle of figure/ground reversal. Students pictured are working on these paintings. 


    Jewelry classes

    We're currently working with copper texture projects, learning metalworking techniques and tools. As a planning step, we worked with paper to create "exploded designs", considering what designs could be made by using one piece of material, creatively cut and rearranged. Students applied this to their copper work, considering effective and economical use of materials.