One of the best things I did this summer was sit down with musician and Teaching Artist, Emma Alabaster, to talk about creativity, teaching, and much much more. Check it out...
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| Emma inspiring some of her students with her bass. |
So, here I am with Emma Alabaster, amazing musician and
Teaching Artist, who I’ve had the pleasure of teaching with…so Emma, first of
all, how long have you been a Teaching Artist?
About eight or nine years.
Cool. You’ve been
doing this for a while.
Yep.
Who do you teach for?
Most recently, Brooklyn Arts Council, where we taught
together. I have worked for other
organizations. BAC is the only arts education
organization I work for right now. I
also work for the Midtown Workmen's Circle School; I'm the music and arts
teacher there. And then, right now I’m
also giving educational tours at Snug Harbor Cultural Arts Center and Botanical Garden on Staten Island. And that’s sort of
Teaching Artist work. We do craft
projects as well as educational tours and whatnot. So, it feels like part of
the same spectrum of work.
Very cool. So
you’re not teaching this summer, correct?
No.
No. Taking a
little break. And well-deserved. So tell me about your most recent teaching
projects from the spring. Who were you
working with, what were you working on?
Sure. So I had two
residencies with the Brooklyn Arts Council.
One of them was the one we did together at a Catholic school in
Bensonhurst, and I was working with third, fourth, and fifth graders, doing
music with them, after school, once a week.
And we did some songwriting together, and we also learned some other
songs that we sang at our final performance.
And then I was at a public elementary school in Manhattan
Beach in Brooklyn, working with
first and second graders, also doing music.
Songwriting with the little ones?
I did some songwriting with them, yeah! And also just general music. For their performance, they sang some
different songs and did a little bit of percussion. Yeah, and they sang one original song and two
other songs as well.
So tell me, what is the most memorable moment you had
teaching music this spring?
One thing I can think of, and I told you about this moment,
one of my students at the Catholic school where we taught together, a fifth
grader, after the kids were dismissed, she came back upstairs and she said,
“Miss Emma, can I sing something for you?”
And it was myself, and the intern that I was working with, we were like,
“Okay, yeah, sure.” And she sang this
whole song, completely heartfelt. It
sounded like a pop song, and it was all about being stuck in a ditch. (Laughter.)
It was like (singing) “I’m stuck in a hole. And I don’t know how to get out.” (Laughter.)
Did she write it?
And afterwards, we were all laughing and we said, you know,
“Did you write that?” And she said “Oh,
I just made it up.”
Right on the spot?
Yeah, totally.
(Laughter.) So that was really
interesting.
She’s the future of music.
She’s the future of music.
And she was really into it. And
it made me feel really good that she felt like she wanted to share that, and
she felt safe with us in that way. Yeah.
It’s pretty incredible.
Very cool. Very
cool.
Very inspiring.
So what about your own creative projects? What are you working on right now?
I work with this band, Cornelius Eady and Rough Magic. Cornelius is a well-known poet and
playwright.
I know his work.
And he’s one of the co-founders of Cave Canem, which a
retreat for African American poets. And
he is an amazing songwriter, although he’s not known as well for that. So the past couple years, he’s been putting
more attention on that, and I work as a musical director for his band and I
play some bass and do some back-up vocals and whatnot, and that’s been kind of
an ongoing gig that’s been really great.
Amazing to work with him, great to learn more about certain kinds of
administrative band stuff, not just for my own band. So that’s an ongoing thing. We have an album coming out in the fall that
is all poems by the poet Sterling A. Brown, set to music, which I’m very
excited about.
Congratulations!
Recording on Sunday our last couple songs for that. So…
Very cool!
Yeah! And then I have
new band that is a duo project that is not out in the world yet either, sounds
like it’s at a similar place to your band.
Mmm-hmm.
(Laughter.)
Although we’ve been doing a lot of recording and haven’t
figured out yet like how we want to do it live.
I think we are going to have to bring more people into the project. We’ve been doing a lot of songwriting and
recording, which is different for me in terms of the process. I haven’t really written through recording in
this way before, but we definitely have a lot of material.
Are you playing upright bass for it?
Not very much. Yeah,
so it’s my partner, Leo, and I. I’m
primarily a bass player, he’s primarily a drummer, and I sing, but we’re at
home, so we’ve been putting in keyboards and guitars and all different kinds of
stuff in Logic.
Fun!
It’s been really fun, and I’m super-excited about that
band. And you know, you should hear from
us sometime soon.
I would love to!
And a project with your partner, too, which is like a…have you done that
before?
Nope. (Laughter.)
I always imagine either that’s going to be absolutely
wonderful or it’s going to be frightening in that if anything goes wrong,
there’s a lot at stake.
Well, he plays in Cornelius’s band too, actually.
Oh, okay.
So, we’ve worked together a lot, but we haven’t done a
project that’s really both of us taking ownership over it in this way, so
that’s new.
Very cool.
Yeah!
And you just got done with Sara Lyons’s bio-cabaret!
Yeah! So with other
random projects, I just did that piece with Sara that was the Margaret Sanger
bio-cabaret, did a little performance piece for that and wrote a song as well.
Did you write the performance piece part?
Yeah.
So was it like a monologue with a song or?
Well, it was partially…so another job that I do, that I
don’t necessarily consider Teaching Artist work is I work as a gynecological
teaching associate.
Right.
I’ve talked to you about this, right?
Yeah, yeah. Yes.
So I teach medical students how to do breast and pelvic
exams. So, shockingly, I have this job
where I use a speculum all the time, but I’ve never used it for art…up until
now!
Right! Excellent!
I was really amazed that it took me that long. (Laughter.)
Yeah, yeah, yeah!
So it was sort of interspersing some knowledge that I have
from that work into, you know, I don’t know what you know about Margaret
Sanger, but she’s really interesting.
Not a whole lot, besides what everyone knows, about
Planned Parenthood.
Right. Founder of
Planned Parenthood. But, you know, she
invented the term “birth control.” Also,
a eugenicist.
Oh. Huh. Didn’t know that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So
a lot of people that we may consider elders or idols in different ways, also can
be like really complex fucked-up characters, that did a lot of amazing shit and
also….so you know, it’s interesting, the way that Sara did the piece, she had a
really cool process, she just kind of gave us the dramaturgy. She had a timeline of Margaret Sanger’s life
and she asked everyone to pick a moment and to make a piece under five minutes
about one piece of the timeline. So, I
chose this moment sort of late in her life, when Planned Parenthood was giving
her an award, and she had actually founded this award. She got up and gave this speech and there was
all this eugenicist shit in her speech.
And it was post-World War II, and that wasn’t really cool anymore and
everyone was kind of like…hmmmm. So, to
me, it’s a really interesting moment in thinking about like intergenerational
work and again the ways that we interact with and think about our elders and
our predecessors in this way. So I did a
song and a monologuey-thing about the speculum.
Cool!
It was fun.
I want more art about speculums. Speculi?
Speculi?
Sure! Speculae. So, yeah, there’s random music and
performance stuff, too, here and there.
Cool. So, I know
for me, this is my big important question, what I struggle for a lot is finding
a balance between teaching and creative work, when I am teaching a lot. So how do you find balance between teaching
and creative work, and all of your other work?
Well, I think struggle is the word. It’s definitely a struggle. I think I’m constantly trying to reevaluate
how much time I want to give to various things, and how much money I need to be making.
You know, there have been years when I do less teaching work, where I
feel like I need a little bit of a break.
I’m always doing something, but sometimes I’m doing less. There is, obviously, some built-in balance
just in the timing of things, like summers are slower. With the BAC work, a lot of it starts in January,
so, it gives you time to kind of build up to that and then when I’m doing that,
I know, January through June is going to be really intense, but I know I’ll
have more time in other parts of the year.
So, that helps. I think as I’ve
taught more, having certain kinds of lesson plans that I’ve built up and
different things I can use so I’m not starting from scratch all the time
because I think lesson planning is like, it’s like being an artist. You can always do more. You can always spend more time tweaking and
improving and coming up with new ideas and something I’ve had to learn and that
I’m still learning is how to let things go.
How to trust that a lot of it is improvising anyway and you can plan and
plan and plan and then you’re not going to do what you planned. So, yeah, trusting in my skills such that I
don’t have to put in tons of time outside of when I’m teaching. Also, we know that lesson plan time is often
unpaid.
Uh huh.
(Laughter.)
So, you know, having good boundaries about that so that
you’re teaching “x” number of hours and then you’re lesson planning tons more,
you know, the hourly wage can get a little bit bleak.
Yeah. Do you have
any systems or strategies specifically to make sure that you get enough time
for music and creativity when you’re in the craziness, the busy times?
Well, something I’ve tried to do, and I haven’t always been
successful, is actually scheduling that in.
I think so often when we become over-scheduled, the things that you
don’t have on your calendar just don’t happen.
So, I think like, yeah, scheduling that in and being like this is the
day and time I’m going to do that is very helpful.
Cool, cool, cool.
I think also I’ve gotten better at figuring out what kind of
Teaching Artist gigs to take. You
know? Like certain organizations that I
used to work for that I felt were not respectful of my time that I don’t work
for anymore. One thing I like about BAC
is that I think they don’t give us a lot of unnecessary paperwork, which is
something that can be really time-consuming.
Yeah.
Also, feeling like, as I’ve gotten more experience, I don’t
feel as desperate for work. I feel like
I can be more choosy and think about which gigs I really want to take, how far
I want to travel, what schedule is really going to work for me. It’s hard not to operate out of scarcity when
you’re a freelancer and an artist, but I try to remember if I get offered
something, it’s not the only thing that will probably come my way, and if it’s
not a good fit for me, don’t take it.
You know?
It’s worth waiting for something better.
Yeah.
That’s a hard lesson to learn.
It’s really hard.
If you’ve mastered that, I applaud you.
I would not say I’ve mastered it. (Laughter.)
If you’re improving in that area, I applaud you.
I’m working on it. (Laughter.)
Would you describe for me the overlap between your
teaching work and your creative work, in any way that you would like.
Well…I think teaching work helps me remember why art is
vital. Beyond just my own survival and
enjoyment. You know, I think I’ve never
been interested in being one of those artists that is just creating art for
other artists, you know? So I really
like working with young people because it reminds me why art matters and it
makes me feel that in really visceral ways.
It also is a way for me to think through various things that I’m
thinking about in my own work. I’ve
seen, even certain kinds of things that I’ve taught again and again over the
past eight or nine years, the ways that I’ve changed them based on my own
thinking about art-making. The students
inspire me. You and I know each other
originally from Rock Camp (Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls—K.B.). Rock Camp is a really important place for me
as someone who came from really formal music education, both in high school and
college. And I come from a family of
artists that are very serious about art-making. To be reminded that art is also
about self-expression and empowerment and the ways that people in general, and
young people specifically, can make really powerful and amazing things without
a lot of technical skills. Seeing that
happen with young people has really freed me up as an artist. I would never have been making this album
that I’m making right now, where I’m playing the instruments that I don’t
really know how to play, if I hadn’t really learned that through teaching.
Awesome.
And then there’s also just silly things like playing guitar
is something I started to do through teaching because it’s easier to accompany
kids on guitar than on bass. And now I’m
using some guitar a little bit on some of my own songwriting and playing, so
there are also ways that it’s helped me like that.
They bleed into each other. That’s cool.
Do you feel like the organizations that you work for actively support
and encourage connections between your teaching practice and your creative
practice?
If I had to answer in one word, I would say no. (Laughter.)
I think some do more than others.
Again, one thing I like about Brooklyn Arts Council is they’re
thoughtful and respectful of our time.
They’re more likely to compensate you for a little bit of planning, or
for coming to a training, or the Mannes Mentorship program you and I just
did. So that makes me feel respected as
an artist, for sure. And I remember when
I first started working at BAC, I remember that they said, “We used to do all
of this other paperwork. But the
feedback we got from our Teaching Artists was that it wasn’t working for them. So we eliminated most of it. And here are some sheets that you can use if
you like to do weekly lesson planning.
Otherwise, here’s what we need from you.” And that, to me, shows real respect. But I think even there, they have all of this
other work that they do, they have their grants department and everything else,
and it feels very separate from the Teaching Artist work, and sometimes I wish
that there was more of a relationship there.
I think that would be a way to support us as artists, to kind of make
connections between their artists that are doing Teaching Artist work, and the
other things they have going on.
Right, right.
For me, on a more personal note, my parents are both
artists. My father’s a musician, and my
mother’s a writer, and they both were New York City
public school teachers, full-time teachers.
And so I think, growing up I saw the ways they struggled between
teaching and being artists, and they really seemed counter to me, it really
seemed like teaching was something that pulled them away from being
artists. And I think Teaching Artist
work has this promise of not doing that because it’s not full-time…
But…(Laughter.)
And in some ways, that’s absolutely true, and I would not be
making as much art if I were a full-time teacher, no question. But I also still really feel that conflict
sometimes. And I don’t know. I think the expectations for the work that we
do are very high.
Mmmhmm. And they
should be.
They should be! They
should be. Yeah. But…
But it’s hard to give all you need to give to your
teaching work and your creative work and…
And I feel like even on the more generous end of how much
these gigs pay, you work it out to the hourly wage, it’s not that great, you
know? It’s not something that for me
allows me to put aside anything. You
know?
It’s pretty hand to mouth.
Exactly. So, you
know, I’m in a place right now where I have my own concerns about the long-term
sustainability of this work.
Yeah. I mean, I
know for myself, I’m trying to think a lot, and part of the reason I started
this interview series was to think about what are other ways that some of the
organizations that we work for can, if more money is not possible, what are
other ways they can support their artists?
To connect the teaching practice and creative practice more, whether
that’s space or access to special grants or…
But so many of these organizations, the people in
administration, they’re stretched really thin.
Yep, they’re over-worked.
So, they don’t necessarily know about everything that we
have going on, and they are not necessarily taking advantage of everything we
could offer. And, in a way, that would
also support our art-making.
Along that line, if you could change one thing about your
life as a Teaching Artist, what would it be?
You’ve brought up a lot of different issues…
I’m actually going to go in a different direction and say
that I think the one thing I would change is that in so many of the schools
that I go into, I am the only art teacher that I see. And that’s what I would change. One thing that really disturbs me about
Teaching Artist work is the way that it has become woven into the privatization
of public education, so full-time public school music and art and theater
teachers do not exist in, it seems like, the vast majority of the public
schools in this city. And instead they
bring in people like us, which is awesome, but it’s not the same. Having me come in once a week for ten weeks
is not the same as having a music teacher in the school. And I think it’s wrong. I think they’re doing the students a
disservice, and I think they’re doing us a disservice as well, in terms of the
expectations that people have of us and in terms of, you know, the work that
we’re doing with the students as well.
I so often wish that if there were full-time arts
teachers in all of the New York City
public schools, then we would have the opportunity to really focus on being
Teaching Artists, meaning things like creating more specialized projects that
really connect to our own creative work.
I mean, thinking about this project you have with Cornelius and the Sterling
Brown poems, you could come in, you could play, you could have the band take
part, you could have Sterling
read his poems.
Sterling has
died.
Oh, I’m sorry!
Well, then you couldn’t have that.
But you could perform some of it and form a curriculum around that work
and have a residency that would be about the relationship between poetry and
music which is something that you’ve been thinking about anyway, instead of, so
much of the time, we’re doing work that’s very general, because they have to
have the basics in order to be able to do anything. And you can integrate stuff, but especially
with the little ones…
And how much, even if you’re talking about doing
foundational work, giving the students the basics, how much foundational work
can you do in ten weeks? (Laughter.) For an hour and a half each week? You can’t!
Even if you go in there every year, year after year after
year, and then you go away and you come back, and there’s a lot of time in
between…
And that almost never happens, too. That’s another thing I would say. I have never, ever had the same teaching gig
twice in a row. I know that people get
that opportunity.
It’s possible.
It almost happened to me this year, and then it didn’t. I think it seems like there are a lot of
reasons for that, part of it is like the work being grant-based, things don’t
get renewed, you know. There are still
certain teaching gigs I think about that I’m like, that was so dreamy. I loved working at that school. I loved that particular residency. And it will never happen again. And you spend those ten weeks getting to know
the school and the administrators and the students, and how to get there on the
subway or whatever, you know, and then by time you’re like “Oh, I have this
down,” it’s over.
I’ve had the opportunity to have quite a few ongoing
residencies from year to year, where I return to schools I’ve taught in before,
but I think it really depends on the organization. But yeah, I feel like too, if you want
something, you have to make that clear.
You’re your only advocate. Or
you’re your biggest advocate. You have
to be.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sure.
Last thing is, any plugs for upcoming work, either for
you or your students or friends? What
should we look out for?
The Rough Magic stuff that’s coming up. If you look up the Cornelius Eady and RoughMagic Facebook page or website, that’ll be out there, and we’ll have some
upcoming gigs, too. And I’ll be posting
stuff on my website about this other band, the duo.
Does it have a name yet?
We do, but it’s not on the internet yet. I don’t know if we should unveil it on your
website.
Tell us!
(Laughter.)
The name that we’re working with is Decibelists.
Nice. I like it.
Do you?
We will keep an eye out for Decibelists.
All right.
Thank you so much, Emma!
This has been a wonderful conversation!
Of course! Thank you!
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| Emma in concert! |
