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Camp helps students express themselves through music

Times Observer photos by Brian Ferry Artist-in-Residence Mikel Prester (right) jams with a group of Warren Music Conservatory camp students and teachers including (from left) Haley Ferrie, Clarabella Glarner, Jadenne Fofana, Caleb Glarner, and Abigail McCord on Wednesday during the third day of a week-long improvisational music and blues camp.

The blues is about expressing what you have to get out in order to help you move forward.

This week at the Warren Music Conservatory, students in grades five through 12 are getting some experience in the blues, improvisation, and expressing themselves through music.

Artist-in-Residence Mikel Prester, teaching artist and musician with Erie Arts and Culture, is leading the week-long camp.

He is introducing theory. He is playing examples of musical styles on his alto saxophone. He is talking history and culture. And he is encouraging students to be themselves.

“These things enable you to express you,” Prester said to a room full of about 15 students on Wednesday. “You are all getting it and getting it well. Every time I hear you all, you are getting better.”

Abigail McCord improvises on trumpet as instructor and Artist-in-Residence Mikel Prester plays the blues on alto saxophone at the Warren Music Conservatory Wednesday during the third day of a week-long improvisational music and blues camp.

“What is the blues?” he said. “The blues is American music.”

It is intrinsically linked to history, and Prester doesn’t shy away from that.

“I am instructing students in how to improvise, through the blues,” he said. At the same time, ‘I’m trying to get them to come in contact with culture, with history.”

“I’m here to bring the truth about this music,” he said. “I’m focusing on music pedagogy, but I always want to bring in the culture.”

As artist-in-residence in Crawford County, the first from Erie Arts and Culture, he presented “The Blues, Jazz, and the Black Experience in America.” He is now the center’s first artist-in-residence in Warren County. “I am blessed and honored to be the first in two different counties,” Prester said.

“It was created by people who needed to be able to express themselves,” Prester said. “This is the music of the slaves. The slaves would be picking cotton from sunup to sundown.”

Initially, the blues was sung.

“You play the blues to express what you have so you can get rid of what you have and feel better,” Prester said. “The blues is cathartic.”

It’s not all depression. The blues includes a “glimmer of hope,” he said. “An expectation and a hope of what can be because we can create it.”

The blues isn’t just a kind of American music, it lies at the base of all distinctly American musical styles, he said. “All these musics have at their foundation the blues.”

“The reason why the blues is a harmonic, stylistic foundation of American music — rock and roll, rockabilly, honky-tonk, R&B, jazz, hip hop — is because it’s multidimensional itself,” he said.

He played improvisational samples of many types of music using the same blues and mixolydian scales he had shared with the students.

At times, all of the students in the class — and Prester — were improvising at the same time.

They were playing in the same key, on the same blues and mixolydian scales.

Learning one blues scale and one mixolydian scale is just a beginning, but it is a foundation.

“A real musician is going to make a point to learn this scale in all 12 keys,” Prester said.

To do that, the musician has to know the major scales in all 12 keys and apply the changes for the blues.

After improvising together, he asked they students not what they learned or how they played. He asked how they felt.

“I will always ask you how you feel,” he said.

“It’s a great opportunity for these students and this community to have someone of Mikel’s caliber here. This kind of opportunity is rare,” Conservatory Music Director Joe Glarner said. “Erie Arts and Culture has allowed access to a brilliant music educator who knows how to get kids excited about learning music.”

“The Warren community has always been a strong supporter of music education and in today’s world it’s increasingly difficult to keep kids’ attention and inspire them to learn music with all the opportunities and distractions out there besides music. Any positive experience based in music education for our community is amazing for supporting both our music educators and children learning music.”

He hopes to continue offering artist-in-residence opportunities to musicians and students.

“This week has been amazing, our staff, and our students have been so excited every night as they all leave, anticipating what the next day will bring,” Glarner said. “We are housing him in one of our Airbnbs upstairs. That has been very helpful.”

“We anticipate the possibility of a residency every funding cycle with Erie Arts and Cultures,” he said.

While the Conservatory is happy to accept whatever teacher EAC can provide, they like the one they have this time.

“We are already talking to Mikel about coming back, and we are already talking to the Erie Arts and Cultures about our next workshop,” Glarner said. “Improv is Mikel’s specialty, the artist designs the format, we support whatever music education initiative they want to provide.”

“Warren is a great town,” Prester said. “A lot of arts here. I’m enjoying my time here.”

He has tight ties with Warren.

“My mentor, the man who brought me into music, was Floyd A. Williams,” he said. Williams was a Boston-based musician and educator who notably played with Duke Ellington Orchestra, among others.

Later in life, he settled in Warren.

Coming full-circle, Prester, who grew up in Meadville, is sharing his expertise, and therefore that of his mentor — Williams’, with students in Warren.

“I am exceptionally blessed to be here to follow his legacy,” Prester said.

“These students are excellent,” Prester said. “They are hungry. They are polite. These are the type of students you want to be teaching.”

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