Resident musician Terre Roche, above, helps JESS students with their songwriting, along with SJSA Instructor Luba Dolgpolsky, below center.
St. John School of the Arts may just have tapped the next Irving Berlin or Otis Redding.
Thanks to a lasting impression by SJSA co-founder Ruth “Sis” Frank and continued excellence at SJSA, Julius E. Sprauve School sixth, seventh and eighth grade students have been learning the finer points of songwriting and music composition.
Many years ago in New York City, Frank met Attorney Peter Strauss, who oversaw the trust for the famed lyricist Irving Caesar, who penned “Tea for Two.” Frank’s meeting with Attorney Strauss proved to leave a lasting impression, SJSA Executive Director Kim Wild explained.
“Most of Irving Caesar’s money went to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers [ASCAP] and the ASCAP Foundation,” said Wild. “But $100,000 of it came back to us at SJSA and that’s when we did the renovations to the school on the outside.”
“Peter once again has been watching us and seeing all the great things we’ve been doing, he arranged for a meeting for me at the ASCAP Foundation,” Wild said. “I went up there this summer we discussed a Songwriting Composition Class for SJSA.”
After going through the formal grant process successfully, SJSA launched its first Songwriting and Composition Class in January. Each week, JESS sixth, seventh and eighth grade students spend 45 minutes with SJSA instructor Luba Dolgpolsky, a singer, songwriter and pianist. St. John musician Laurie Keefe of The Hot Club has also been instructing the JESS students, Wild added.
Last week, students got an extra treat in the form of an artist in residence. Professional musician and songwriter Terre Roche, who has been an active performance and recording artist since the mid-1970s, spent a week of intensive training with the students in late March, Wild explained.
“Part of the grant includes an artist in residence, a professional musician who comes down from the states and gives a more intensive songwriting composition study,” said the SJSA Executive Director. “Terre has so much experience in the music industry and is so talented, the week has been amazing.”
For the artist in residence portion of the class, JESS students spent an hour and 15 minutes each day with Roche, and spent time writing their own songs and performing impressive renditions of other songs in three part harmonies with percussion accompaniment.
“It’s been really impressive what Terre has been doing with the kids,” said Wild. “They learned all the different components of a really fun song and sounded great. The students will all be composing their own song together and they learned so much from working with Terre.”
SJSA officials plan to try for the ASCAP grant again next year and even offer the Songwriting and Composition Class to other schools, Wild explained.
“We definitely want to do this again next year and want to include Gifft Hill School as well,” she said. “It’s been such a great class, we are really excited about it.”
