Let's connect!
Enjoy Mill Valley
  • HOME
  • EVENTS & GUIDES
    • 2020-21 EMV Guide
    • 2020 Mill Valley Wine, Beer & Gourmet Food Tasting
    • Winterfest >
      • Activities, Food & Entertainment
      • About Winterfest
    • Calendar
    • Special Events
  • EAT
  • Stay
  • VISIT
    • Muir Woods
    • PLAY
    • Tour
    • Map
    • PRESS
  • SHOP
    • Enjoy Mill Valley Store
    • Shopping Areas
    • Apparel and Jewelry
    • Automotive
    • Banking & Financial Services
    • Biz, Consumer & Professional Services
    • Beauty & Grooming
    • Fitness & Sports
    • Food & Wine
    • Home & Garden
    • Kids & Pets
    • Health & Wellness
    • Nonprofit Organizations
    • Real Estate
    • Specialty Shops
  • A&E
  • EMV Films
  • BLOG
  • Mill Valley Chamber
  • City of Mill Valley
  • CONTACT US
  • Subscribe
  • Advertise on Enjoy Mill Valley
  • ShopMV

Middle Schoolers, Alums to Play Bluegrass Benefit Show for Kiddo! at Sweetwater

11/8/2015

0 Comments

 
Grateful Bluegrass Boys and Mill Valley Middle School Bluegrass Club play fundraiser for the organization that supports the Mill Valley School District music program.
Picture
The Mill Valley Middle School Bluegrass Club. Photo by Nikita Valejev.
Lori Adessa has been teaching music in Mill Valley School District schools for 23 years, but for the first 22, she was unable to link her profession with her passion for bluegrass music. That changed last year, when she and Mill Valley Middle School orchestra instructor Phoebe Dong launched the Mill Valley Middle School Bluegrass Club.

“It’s been my dream was to have a bluegrass club at the Middle School,” Adessa says. “It’s something I really wanted to do for a long time – we just didn’t have the students,” Adessa says.

The Club has grown to as many as 25 students this year, enough to populate three bluegrass bands that will be taking the stage at the venerable Sweetwater Music Hall on Wednesday, Nov. 11. The MVMS bands are opening for the Grateful Bluegrass Boys, a group of well-traveled bluegrass musicians playing classic rock songs from the likes of the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, the Eagles and Van Morrison, in a benefit show for Kiddo!, the 33-year-old juggernaut private education foundation that supports a vast array of music and technology programs within the Mill Valley School District.

Two members of the Grateful Bluegrass Boys, Aaron Redner and Bryan Thorne, came through the Mill Valley School District music program and credit Joe Angiulo, the hugely influential local music teacher who retired after 30 years in Mill Valley’s schools and now sits on the board of the Mill Valley Chamber Music Society, with first connecting them to the genre.

“Joe was the person who first laid out all of the instruments in front me,” Redner says. “I was drawn to the violin and Bryan was drawn to the cello. We are living examples of the Mill Valley public school system.”

Redner, who attended Old Mill, Park and the Middle School, credits Kiddo!, the district’s music program and Angiulo specifically for a career that has sent him all over the world playing 200 shows a year over a 13-year stint as a member of stalwart California bluegrass band Hot Buttered Rum. Redner and Horne first met in the Tam High Orchestra and played in Hot Buttered Rum together for many years.

Redner and Horne first bonded around the band Old and in the Way, a bluegrass supergroup that featured the likes of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, mandolin legend David Grisman, guitarist Peter Rowan, bassist John Kahn and renowned fiddler Vassar Clements. The band’s self-titled debut album is one of the best-selling bluegrass albums of all time.
As a violinist who got his master’s degree in classical music from the New England Conservatory in Boston, Redner was blown away by Clements.

“That was my beginning,” says Redner, who is now the director of the Valley Vibes Orchestra, a program within the Sonoma Valley Unified School District that is based on the world-renowned “El Sistema” music program of Venezuela, which serves hundreds of thousands of underprivileged youth each year in intense, free orchestra programs.

The beginning of the MVMS Bluegrass Club arrived serendipitously, when a Tam Valley student asked Adessa if her could learn banjo. Knowing that the student would later be going to the Middle School, she asked Dong, who was recently recognized as Teacher of the Year by the Marin Symphony and who is closely connected to the school’s string instrument players as the orchestra director. Dong signed off, and Adessa started spreading the word. It grew quickly from there.

“Bluegrass is in now,” Adessa says. “Whereas when I was playing, it was NOT in for most kids.”

The music itself is great for the students’ overall musical skills, particularly because each musician doesn’t play the melody at the same time. Instead, one musician plays the melody, often improvising, and the rest are playing in the background – and everything is memorized.

“I bring all of the ideas of how to perform and play the music as a bluegrass band, so it doesn’t sound like a bluegrass orchestra but a bluegrass band,” says Adessa, who will play all of the banjo parts with each of the club bands at the Sweetwater show.

Since most of the club’s musicians are also in the school orchestra, the club has participated in the school’s annual winter and spring orchestra programs to date, and at community events.

“Getting to play at this Sweetwater is huge for them,” Adessa says.
​

The 411: The Grateful Bluegrass Boys and the Mill Valley Middle School Bluegrass Club play the Sweetwater Music Hall on Wednesday, November 11, a all-ages benefit for Kiddo!. More info and tickets.

Want to know what's happening around town? Click here to subscribe to the Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Subscribe to the free Enjoy Mill Valley Blog

    * required
    Click here to subscribe to the free Enjoy Mill Valley Blog by Email!

    RSS Feed

    Blog Archives

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013

    Categories

    All
    142 Throckmorton
    Art
    Arts & Entertainment
    City Council
    City Of Mill Valley
    County Of Marin
    Depot Plaza
    Downtown Mill Valley
    Emergency Preparedness
    First Tuesday Artwalk
    Food & Drink
    Holidays
    Kiddo!
    Live Music
    Local Laws
    Marin Mommies
    Marin Theatre Company
    Miller Avenue
    Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival
    Mill Valley Film Festival
    Mill Valley History
    Mill-valley-in-the-news
    Mill Valley Library
    Mill Valley Market
    Mill Valley School District
    Mount Tamalpais
    MV Chamber Biz Buzz
    Parks & Recreation
    Philanthropy
    Public Restrooms
    Restaurants
    Shopping
    Strawberry Village
    Sweetwater Music Hall
    Tam High
    Tam Junction
    Tam Valley
    The Redwoods
    Volunteerism

Picture
   
85 Throckmorton Avenue
Mill Valley, Callifornia 94941
415.388.9700
info@millvalley.org



Copyright 2018 Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center
All images used with permission and/or source attribution.
Site Design by Linda Rosso Marketing and Communications