Classical string, wind, and keyboard players of all skill levels and musical interests are invited to join the coached Chamber Music Workshop for five weekly meetings, plus an informal recital for members of the workshop and their invited guests.
The workshop meets Wednesday evenings from 7:00 to 9:00 pm starting October 23, under the guidance of violinist/violist Tara Flandreau.
Participants play music from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern, and Contemporary chamber literature. Good music-reading skills are essential; experience playing with others is a definite plus but not essential. Our goals are to help you enlarge your familiarity with chamber music literature; become a more confident and proficient ensemble player; and meet others who share your interest in chamber music.
Join a Sunday afternoon flute workshop designed and led by flutist Carol Adee. The emphasis of this workshop will be on honoring the musicality of each person and enlivening our enjoyment of “flutistry” whether alone or with others. All levels are encouraged.
The format will include the following:
Ensemble workshop
Flying Fingers
Floga
Story Telling
Playing for a positive audience
Show and Tell
Ensemble Fun
Carol Adee holds a M.M. degree from Yale School of Music and a Waldorf Teaching Certificate. She has taught flute and chamber music at Stanford and Dominican Universities as well as Music and Musical Pedagogy for the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training. As a performing musician Carol has worked in a wide variety of new music, chamber, and orchestral environments. She is a founding member of ECHO Camber Orchestra.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1-5 PM.
$140 tuition payable at the workshop.
Applications are due by Wednesday, October 16th, 2024
If you are between the ages of 12 and 18 and play violin, viola, or cello, you are invited to join a workshop coached by Marin Symphony violist Meg Eldridge where you’ll hone your ensemble skills and play pieces by Mozart, Britten, Holst, and other great composers.
Chamber music is the classical music equivalent of a rock band (but without the singing): There’s no conductor and each member of the group is responsible for their own part.
If you’re used to playing in an orchestra – or if you’re new to playing with people other than your teacher – get ready for a great new experience.
The workshop meets at Marin Community Music School in San Anselmo from 3:00 to 4:30 pm on four consecutive Sundays starting August 4 and concludes with a brief informal performance on Sunday, August 25 at 5:30.
The participation fee is $200. Financial assistance is available to qualified applicants. You do not need to be currently enrolled at Marin Community Music School to participate.
Classical string, wind, and keyboard players of all skill levels and musical interests are invited to join the coached Chamber Music Workshop for five weekly meetings, plus an informal recital for members of the workshop and their invited guests.
The workshop meets Sunday mornings from 10:00 am to noon, starting April 7, under the guidance of flautist Carol Adee.
Participants play music from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern, and Contemporary chamber literature. Good music-reading skills are essential; experience playing with others is a definite plus but not essential. Our goals are to help you enlarge your familiarity with chamber music literature; become a more confident and proficient ensemble player; and meet others who share your interest in chamber music.
If you would like to enroll, please fill out the following short form here.
SUMMER 2024 Chamber Music Class
coach: Carol Adee
dates: July 21 – August 18, 2024
hours: five Sundays, 10 am – noon, plus recital Fri, August 18, time TBA
$180 for the class
Students will be formed into groups and coached on specific pieces of music during the course. At the end of the five-week session, groups will perform their pieces at an informal concert.
Classical string, wind, and keyboard players of all skill levels and musical interests are invited to join the coached Chamber Music Workshop for six weekly meetings, including an informal recital for members of the workshop and their invited guests.
The workshop meets Sunday mornings from 10:00 to Noon, starting April 7, under the guidance of violinist Kathy Marshall. A member of both Marin Symphony and Santa Rosa Symphony and a faculty member at Marin Community Music School, Kathy is an experienced chamber music coach who excels in helping amateur musicians achieve their ensemble goals.
Participants play music from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Modern, and Contemporary chamber literature. Good music-reading skills are essential; experience playing with others is a definite plus but not essential. Our goals are to help you enlarge your familiarity with chamber music literature; become a more confident and proficient ensemble player; and meet others who share your interest in chamber music.
Nothing is more delightful for musicians than playing with others in a small group. Whether it’s a jazz trio, a bluegrass band, a rock group, or a string quartet, small groups offer us the chance to share music with others in the most personal way. Instead of watching the conductor’s baton, we watch one another and communicate with small gestures, nods, raised eyebrows, and, of course, through the music itself.
Since its founding in 2009, Marin Community Music School has always attracted amateur classical musicians to its coached chamber music program. And while COVID restrictions put the program on hold for a couple of years, it’s happily come back to life with a wonderful new coach, flutist Carol Adee, who brings a fresh, welcoming approach to her students.
“Playing with other people is not only interesting and fun and rewarding, it makes people more aware of how music comes together,” Carol says. “It accustoms us to holding an inner sense of time while also being aware of other people.”
The Summer program met Wednesday evenings from July 26 through August 23. At the final meeting, the players entertained one another with informal performances of Kuhlau’s Grand Quartet for flutes, Beethoven’s opus 11 Piano Trio, and the Piano Quartet opus 1, number 2 by Johann Gottlieb Naumann (1740-1801), pictured above.
The program resumes on October 4, 2023, under the guidance of violinist/violist Tara Flandreau. Learn more here.
Want to learn how to play in a band and perform on stage? Sign up for MCMS Fall Band Workshop today. Or attend a free information session on Sunday, October 1, from 2:00 to 3:00 pm.
Who Can Join? If you are between the ages of 8 and 18 and can sing or play an instrument of any kind, you are welcome. You do not need to be currently enrolled as a private student at MCMS.
How Does It Work? You attend five ninety-minute Band Workshops in October and November where MCMS faculty members teach you how to sing and play with others and help you rehearse your songs. In December, your band takes the stage at the MCMS Fall Recital and you perform for a live audience.
What Kind of Music Will You Play? Your band will pick two or three songs from a list of pop, rock, country, and singer/songwriter styles. Some of the songs were huge hits, while others may be less well known. All are chosen to help you get the most from your band experience.
Who Are the Teachers? Guitarist Joe Marquez, violist/violinist Tara Flandreau, bassist Tommy O’Mahony, and drummer Sean Nelson. They will coach and accompany each band as needed.
How Much Does It Cost? Band Workshop costs $150 per participant, payable upon registration. Sheet music is provided.
When Does It Meet? Sundays from 2:00 to 3:30 pm on 10/15, 10/29, 11/5, 11/19, and 12/3. The bands perform on Saturday, 12/9, at 2:00 pm.
How Can You Learn More? Attend a free informational session at Marin Community Music School on Sunday, October 1, from 2:00 to 3:00 pm or ask your teacher for more details. Register for orientation here.
Fourth-generation San Francisco native and long-time Marin resident Tara Flandreau is a violinist, violist, composer/improviser, and conductor. She graduated from College of Marin and Dominican College, earning Bachelor and Master of Music degrees, and did doctoral work at Columbia University. Tara has an extensive career as music educator and performing musician. She was chair of the Music and Performing Arts Departments at the College of Marin for many years, where she taught music theory and composition, ear training, strings, computer music notation software, chamber music, and conducted the COM Symphony Orchestra. Currently, Tara teaches string lessons and chamber music classes at MCMS, and plays in the ECHO Chamber Orchestra and the Marin Symphony.
Besides classical repertoire, Tara enjoys playing a wide variety of music, from performing at the Monterey Pops Festival recreation of the entire Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper Album, to a SF concert series celebrating the 100th birthday of composer John Cage. She has performed and recorded with many improvising orchestras and free-jazz musicians. Among her compositions is a short opera about SF eccentric Grimes Pozikov, the “Human Jukebox” who performed songs on his trumpet in a phone-booth sized box at Fisherman’s Wharf during the 1960’s – 1980’s..
Tara has also created an extensive music theory resource website called www.musictheoryteacher.com which has helped music students from around the world to better understand music theory.
Flutist Carol Adee was surrounded by music growing up. Holding a M.M. from Yale School of Music and a Waldorf Teaching Certificate, she has taught flute and chamber music at Stanford and Dominican Universities as well as Music and Musical Pedagogy for the Bay Area Center for Waldorf Teacher Training.
Her many years as Music Director at Marin Waldorf School have contributed to her collaborative spirit and interest in integrating music, story, art and movement into other subjects. She is currently Music Director at Heartwood Charter School and a Teaching Artist for Enriching Lives through Music, an El Sistema program in Marin County working primarily with the vibrant multilingual children of the immigrant community. As a performing musician, Carol has worked in a wide variety of new music, chamber and orchestral environments, having played with San Francisco Symphony, Ballet and Opera Orchestras along with other Bay Area orchestras, including touring and recording as principal flute with Women’s Philharmonic for 15 years. Her solo CD Bach to NatureThree Suites in the Wilderness, has been distributed on several continents and on Spotify. As a founding member of ECHO Chamber Orchestra, Carol is working to create more collaborative orchestral experiences for musicians and audiences.
Violist Meg Eldridge grew up in Marin County, and is an active orchestral and chamber musician, and string teacher.
Meg studied at the University of Michigan, the Manhattan School of Music, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She performs with the Marin Symphony, the Santa Rosa Symphony, Carmel Bach Festival, and Philharmonia Healdsburg. She also plays violin with the Archangeli Baroque Strings, Marin Baroque of the Marin String Quartet, which gives concerts throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Meg plays on a viola that was made by Bronek Cison in Chicago in 2007, as well as on a French viola made in Mirecourt in the late 1800’s. She also teaches violin and viola at the Marin Waldorf School and at the Branson School.
Join your fellow cellists to read and rehearse music for cello ensemble in a relaxed, collegial environment. We’ll play chorales by Johann Sebastian Bach, original compositions by Julius Klengel, arrangements of works by Robert Schumann, and other enjoyable music in six 90-minute sessions.
No performing, just geeking out on the pleasure of hearing cellos, cellos, and nothing but cellos.
Do you already know some chords and songs on the guitar, but feel like you’re speaking bits and pieces of a foreign language?
Do you marvel at guitarists who can easily change the key of a song to fit their vocal range or improvise a solo on the spot?
They’re not doing magic tricks. They’re just speaking a musical language they’ve taken time to learn from the ground up.
In this series of hour-long weekly classes, I’ll teach you the basics of that language — notes, intervals, scales, chords, and keys — as they apply to the guitar.
With our instruments in hand, we’ll use fretboard diagrams and simple exercises to learn the fundamentals of music. We won’t be reading music notation or tab. Instead, we’ll train our ears to show our hands what to do.
No matter how long you’ve been playing the guitar or how old you are, I can help you understand the vocabulary and grammar of music-making and hear the patterns common to pop, rock, folk, and classical music.
I can’t work wonders, so you’ll need to pay attention and apply what I show you to your guitar playing. But don’t worry, I’ll give you the tools you need with simple exercises and drills you can do at home.
You’ll start to understand how music actually works — the alphabet, the vocabulary, the phrases, sentences, and paragraphs — so you can play more confidently and tell your own musical stories.
Topics The Major Scale and Two-Note Chords Notes and Intervals Scales and Modes Three-Note Chords Keys and Four-Note Chords Key Changes and Improvisation
Logistics Wednesdays, 7:00 to 8:00 pm
Location: Marin Community Music School, 55 San Anselmo Avenue, San Anselmo, CA 94960
Fee: $25 per class for new students, $15 for students already enrolled in lessons.
