User:Santinolo/Manhattan New Music Project

Manhattan New Music Project (MNMP) is a not-for-profit organization striving to fosters the creation and presentation of new music while offering student populations opportunities to engage in the artistic creation process. Founded by the late jazz guitarist and composer Paul Nash in 1990, Manhattan New Music Project continues to cultivate New York City in both the realms of performance and arts education.

Founder, Paul Nash
Paul Nash (1948-2005) was a gifted composer with an original voice. When Nash lost his battle with brain cancer in 2005, the world lost a visionary with a unique harmonic sense and a passion for infectious, driving rhythms. His music reflects a restless commitment to musical experimentation—integrating by turns the sound worlds of jazz, classical, and rock through his own personal synthesis.

A Bronx native, Nash earned B.M. and M.A. degrees in music composition from the Berklee College of Music in Boston and Mills College in Oakland (CA), respectively. In 1977, he created the 10-piece Paul Nash Ensemble in San Francisco. The group included trumpeter Mark Isham who, influenced by Nash’s genre of morphing ideas, created New Age music for Windham Hill Records and become a Grammy and Academy Award nominated soundtrack composer. Nash also helped to organize the Bay Area Jazz Composers Orchestra, an ensemble that explored the merging of jazz and classical music.

In 1990, he returned to New York and founded Manhattan New Music Project, bringing together various new music performers, including French horn innovator Tom Varner, and unsung guitar great Vic Juris. Under the MNMP umbrella, Nash wrote chamber music, orchestral pieces and playful avant garde compositions inspired by John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Nash began a new musical direction with the creation of site-specific musical work, culminating in a series of performances in New York City parks. Still Sounds Run Deep deploys musicians around public spaces and provides for interactivity with ambient sounds and the rhythms of passersby. Passionate about music education, Nash simultaneously worked to establish Manhattan New Music Project as a reputable arts-in-education organization, recruiting a strong roster of teaching artists and developing educational partnerships.

Performance
Manhattan New Music Project began as a performing ensemble in 1990. Founded by late jazz artist and composer Paul Nash, the group aimed to foster the creation and presentation of new works in the jazz arena. Since Nash’s untimely passing, MNMP’s performance mission has expanded to include new, forward-thinking classical chamber, solo, electronic and interactive music. We seek to cross traditional musical boundaries and take on a catalytic role in the growth of new music composition through collaborative projects with musicians and composers of the same interest.

Arts Education
Manhattan New Music Project fosters original, student-created work through educational residencies and professional development across all arts disciplines. Our residencies address skill-based learning, aesthetic comprehension, contextual and cultural understanding as well as curriculum-integrated instruction. MNMP is an approved NYC Department of Education vendor and currently operates in all five boroughs.

MNMP has developed and implemented arts programs to support the needs of a diverse range of students in general education, ESL and special needs environments, both self-contained and CTT. Recognizing that the arts provide a unique entry point for learning, MNMP has specialized in creating educational models for students with learning disabilities, emotional and behavioral disabilities, mental retardation, multiple disabilities, and autism spectrum disorders. These efforts have been rewarded and encouraged through five multi-year grants from the US Department of Education, three of which are in partnership with District 75.

Professional Development

MNMP offers short-term and long-term professional development workshops for both classroom teachers and arts specialists. All of MNMP's teacher trainings provide hands-on arts activities that are tailored to schools’ specific needs. Aligned with New York State Learning Standards as well as the New York City Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in the Arts, MNMP's most successful P.D. model provides teacher workshops, followed by in-class mentoring in a collaborative, co-teaching environment.

Special Programs

MNMP has partnered with New York City’s Special Education district, District 75, since 2002 on both small and large-scale professional development and in-class programs.


 * 70% of MNMP’s teaching artists are experienced in working with special education
 * 65% of these artists have worked with District 75’s most severely disabled populations


 * Communication and Socialization through the Arts (2008-11):
 * Currently finishing its second of three years, CASTA seeks to improve communication and socialization deficits of students with autism spectrum disorder. District 75 and MNMP have collaboratively developed multidisciplinary arts curricula through which these deficits can be addressed. Over its three-year duration, the project will serve 110 teachers and 3,000 students in 36 schools.


 * Creative and Integrative Arts Educators (2005-08):
 * This three-year professional development program integrated multidisciplinary arts activities with classroom learning through students’ creation of a musical theater production. Classroom teachers and arts specialists learned to guide the students through scriptwriting, songwriting, set and costume design, and performance of an original production based on classroom curriculum. The project served 120 teachers and 4,430 students in 20 schools.


 * Creative Music Educators (2002-05):
 * This was a three-year professional development program designed to improve learning outcomes in District 75’s music classrooms. The project served 52 teachers and 4,550 students in 31 schools, and post-project dissemination trained dozens more teachers.