April was a fairly busy month... At one point, I spent a weekend in New Haven, CT with Positive Vibes Youth Steel Orchestra. PVYSO is the performing band from the Cultural Academy for Excellence (CAFE), where I teach weekly, and we were in New Haven for a joint concert with St. Luke's Steel Orchestra. It was a great concert and St. Luke's band was very gracious to us. The kids that make up PVYSO range in age from 10 to 18 and are, in my opinion, one of the most highly skilled school-age bands in the country. The CAFE program is a progressive academics and music education program that utilizes the steel pan as a music teaching tool. That is, we teach Western music in the Western music traditions of both musical notation and rote method, and the instrument that all of the participants learn on is the steel pan. In doing this, the program not only expands the idiomatic expectations of the instrument, but it also creates skilled pan players, who are musically literate. I find in other school-aged programs one piece of the equation is typically missing... Either the kids can read well, but don't really "swing"... or they play really well, but can't read at all. CAFE is teaching both - plus theory and improvisation. In a few there are going to be some players on the scene that will change the world's perception of what this instrument can and should do.
VP