Talk about lucky! About a year and a half ago we were very lucky in CMAS to have Nils Lofgren (the E Street Band, Neil Young) come in and speak to CMAS about his career and his music, the industry - pretty much all the things that he has ever done professionally as a musician. He was scheduled originally to come in for, I think, about an hour and he wound up staying for just shy of three. Needless to say it was pretty amazing. Nils is an incredibly gifted musician - pretty much everyone knows that. It's evident in all the work he does. It's evident in the people he works with. But more than that, he's just a really gracious person. Nils is one of the kindest most gentlest souls I've ever met and very much willing to share anything that he can with others.
Certainly that session with CMAS was extremely successful. It was extremely inspiring - not just for the students, but also for me; as well as any number of other faculty from the school that attended. In the wake of that, I was blessed in that Nils wanted to stay in touch, and about 10 months ago, back in February of this year, kind of out of the blue, I got a phone call and he wanted to know a) if I'm still teaching at the school and had the CMAS program and b) if I would be interested in having CMAS work with him as part of his upcoming album that at the time he was still putting together.
Obviously the answer was yes. It is a rare gift when an artist of his stature and skill offers to work with your students. Something that we simply could not pass up. Basically, the project is rooted in Nils feeling that he's aware of all the new technology and is aware of the need to involve and reach out to a younger generation (more specifically people that are the age of my students) but he's not quite sure how to do it. So his idea was basically to turn my students into a kind of record labels of sorts. Not having the kids on the phones pushing the CD or anything like that, but just having them help him work through what I might or might not work.
We started this process very recently. He's coming in frequently to CMAS and he's talked with students now quite a bit about what he has in mind. He's played a good bit for them and has relayed some great stories to them. He's basically giving them open access to Nils Lofgren the legendary guitarist, songwriter, singer, producer, and it's been just wonderful.
Right now we are focusing on helping him create two videos for two songs that are on his new album "Old School." The album by the way is unbelievable and if you get a chance to pick it up you absolutely should. It's on iTunes and it is also available at his website and any number of other places www.NilsLofgren.com.
Anyway, CMAS is not really a video production program. CMAS is about music. It's about writing it. It's about performing it. It's about producing it. Both live and in the studio. But we are not a video production class. However, several of the my students in CMAS are also very accomplished students in our Media Communications program at the school where they do work very specifically on video production, so we are tapping lots and lots of resources for this.
One of the videos is basically going to be a more standardized kind of storyboarded video for the song "Miss You Ray." The other one is going to be a kind of "making of" documentary for the song "Dream Big." We're hoping that after those we can move on into more detailed production and songwriting skills with Nils. He and I have even discussed the possibility of doing a live show - one of our songwriter nights as it were - but featuring him. We're still not quite sure how that will work or if we can even manage to make that happen, but to even be talking about it is pretty amazing.
Both Nils and I are hopeful that this will be a lasting partnership. Something that the CMAS program does with him not necessarily every year, but that the students have this resource of an artist such as Nils. It's a remarkable opportunity and it is a tremendous honor and I cannot ever fully thank or express how grateful I am to Nils for giving my students - and honestly me - the opportunity to work with him like this.
Much more coming soon...
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