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About SUBWAY MOON
SUBWAY MOON is an on-going musical/video performing experience that combines the forces of professional jazz musicians and filmmakers with high-school music students from around the world. It is designed to be 1) a public performance series including jazz, poetry, and film; and 2) an educational and field-experiential program for students from a far-reaching compass of backgrounds.
Conceived in 2007 by musician and New York City high-school teacher Roy Nathanson, Subway Moon offers educational opportunities for students not only to write original material but also to perform it in prominent, professional venues (museums, theaters, concert halls) side-by-side with their peers from other countries. The students are from every kind of background and sensitivity: some are at-risk with poor academic histories, others are more sophisticated or from more stable homes. Some come from backgrounds lacking economic privilege; others are from more comfortable means. Some have never experienced formal music concerts of any kind in any way; others come with music performance histories on both sides of the proscenium. Oversight and participation by working professionals ensures performances of Subway Moon that impress not only the students' grandparents but the widest music-loving public.
To date Subway Moon has been presented more than twenty unique venues. Three productions have included country-to-country high-school exchange students as principal participants.
In 2008 students from one of New York City's public high schools, Institute for Collaborative Education (I.C.E.), contributed seven original songs to the project and students from Collège Jean Jaurès, Antennes jeunesses Courtillières et 4 chemins de Pantin, and Atelier jazz du CRD de Patin in Paris, France, added five more songs. The nineteen New York and thirty-five French students presented joint concerts complemented on stage by the jazz band The Jazz Passengers, first in France (Espace 1789, Saint-Ouen; March 29-30, 2008) as part of Paris's annual international Banlieues Bleues Festival and, two months later, in New York (The Great Hall at The Cooper Union, co-sponsored by the New York Transit Museum, CMA/FACE French-American Jazz Exchange Program; May 21, 2008). American students were housed by local host families during the week of rehearsing and cultural exchange before the public performances in France, and then the Americans returned the hospitality in kind.
In 2011 twenty-three I.C.E. Students joined fifty-eight students in Newcastle/Gateshead, England, for a new version of Subway Moon, sponsored by Arts Council England and The Sage Gateshead, northern England's new state-of-the art performing arts center and music school. Other local sponsor/participants were CoMusica Foundation Learning; Jambone; The Sage Gateshead Youth Jazz Ensemble; Shotton Hall School, Peterlee; Benfield School, Newcastle; and SERIOUS, the British jazz promoter. The U.S. Students contributed four new songs and the U.K. Students wrote another four. These songs, together with some of the previously established material, were featured in a gala public concert, with almost eighty students and professional musicians participating (April 27, 2011).
In January 2013 Subway Moon gave two concerts in Germany, under the auspices of the Bavarian Ministry of the Family, the American Consulate in Munich, and the Goethe Institute. Thirty I.C.E. students joined thirty more from Munich's Pestalozzi-Gymnasium at the Bavarian Music Academy at Alteglofsheim castle (near Regensburg) and at Amerika Haus (Munich). We returned to Germany in April 2015, for concerts at Kampnagel's YoungStar Festival in Hamburg.
The Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden hosted students from Staten Island's Curtis High School and I.C.E. students in December 2016 for our first subway-series Subway Moon. In May 2017, we traveled to Detroit, MI, to collaborate with our hosts at Central High School. The High School for Violin and Dance (Bronx) and City-As-School (New York City) joined I.C.E. students in our Subway Moon 2018 show at Symphony Space (Manhattan) on April 30, 2018.
The Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City presented Subway Moon, featuring I.C.E. juniors and seniors playing with Roy Nathanson and Sotto Voce, on February 3, 2014.
Subway Moon's initial incarnation was in 2007, when Nathanson began writing poems set in New York City's subway system and inspired by its underground constituency. He scored the poems for his veteran band, The Jazz Passengers/Sotto Voce, and filmmaker Andrew Gurian created video interpretations for the music. The first public performances were at MassMOCA in North Adams, Massachusetts (November 17, 2007), and Joe's Pub at New York City's Public Theater (November 30, 2007). Nathanson's poems were published by Buddy's Knife jazzedition (Cologne, 2007), and the band released a Subway Moon CD in 2009 (produced by Hugo Dwyer and distributed by ENJA Records). Nathanson then realized that he could include his own high-school music students in both the writing and performing aspects of Subway Moon and that exchanges could be arranged with students from other cities. Versions of Subway Moon were also performed at Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium (October 2010) and the Saalfelden (Austria) Jazz Festival (2010).
The subway theme provides cultural/environmental anchor—a common ground from which students and audiences can meet across geographical boundaries. Our (musicians, students, filmmakers, audience) experiences prove that the underground/subway/metro prompts allegories for lives above ground. Subway culture—part myth, part reality—is revealed as a universal urban mentality. The subway has become both the starting point for a collaborative process among the students and professionals as well as its end point, the public concert. It would seem that the construct of urban public transportation is more commonplace than that of the formal concert: for many of the students—and for many of their audience--Subway Moon is their maiden introduction to music presented on a stage in a hall.
Student input has so far been limited to the musical side of Subway Moon. Gurian and Nathanson's intent is to include students in the design and production of the visual component of the project as well. The proliferation of low-cost video equipment and visual-arts curricula in schools makes the integration of images by students an obvious addition to Subway Moon.
Subway Moon is about teenagers—their mind-set, their education, their experience, their talent; Subway Moon is about twenty-first-century jazz, poetry, and video images; Subway Moon is about the global force of music.
Conceived in 2007 by musician and New York City high-school teacher Roy Nathanson, Subway Moon offers educational opportunities for students not only to write original material but also to perform it in prominent, professional venues (museums, theaters, concert halls) side-by-side with their peers from other countries. The students are from every kind of background and sensitivity: some are at-risk with poor academic histories, others are more sophisticated or from more stable homes. Some come from backgrounds lacking economic privilege; others are from more comfortable means. Some have never experienced formal music concerts of any kind in any way; others come with music performance histories on both sides of the proscenium. Oversight and participation by working professionals ensures performances of Subway Moon that impress not only the students' grandparents but the widest music-loving public.
To date Subway Moon has been presented more than twenty unique venues. Three productions have included country-to-country high-school exchange students as principal participants.
In 2008 students from one of New York City's public high schools, Institute for Collaborative Education (I.C.E.), contributed seven original songs to the project and students from Collège Jean Jaurès, Antennes jeunesses Courtillières et 4 chemins de Pantin, and Atelier jazz du CRD de Patin in Paris, France, added five more songs. The nineteen New York and thirty-five French students presented joint concerts complemented on stage by the jazz band The Jazz Passengers, first in France (Espace 1789, Saint-Ouen; March 29-30, 2008) as part of Paris's annual international Banlieues Bleues Festival and, two months later, in New York (The Great Hall at The Cooper Union, co-sponsored by the New York Transit Museum, CMA/FACE French-American Jazz Exchange Program; May 21, 2008). American students were housed by local host families during the week of rehearsing and cultural exchange before the public performances in France, and then the Americans returned the hospitality in kind.
In 2011 twenty-three I.C.E. Students joined fifty-eight students in Newcastle/Gateshead, England, for a new version of Subway Moon, sponsored by Arts Council England and The Sage Gateshead, northern England's new state-of-the art performing arts center and music school. Other local sponsor/participants were CoMusica Foundation Learning; Jambone; The Sage Gateshead Youth Jazz Ensemble; Shotton Hall School, Peterlee; Benfield School, Newcastle; and SERIOUS, the British jazz promoter. The U.S. Students contributed four new songs and the U.K. Students wrote another four. These songs, together with some of the previously established material, were featured in a gala public concert, with almost eighty students and professional musicians participating (April 27, 2011).
In January 2013 Subway Moon gave two concerts in Germany, under the auspices of the Bavarian Ministry of the Family, the American Consulate in Munich, and the Goethe Institute. Thirty I.C.E. students joined thirty more from Munich's Pestalozzi-Gymnasium at the Bavarian Music Academy at Alteglofsheim castle (near Regensburg) and at Amerika Haus (Munich). We returned to Germany in April 2015, for concerts at Kampnagel's YoungStar Festival in Hamburg.
The Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden hosted students from Staten Island's Curtis High School and I.C.E. students in December 2016 for our first subway-series Subway Moon. In May 2017, we traveled to Detroit, MI, to collaborate with our hosts at Central High School. The High School for Violin and Dance (Bronx) and City-As-School (New York City) joined I.C.E. students in our Subway Moon 2018 show at Symphony Space (Manhattan) on April 30, 2018.
The Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City presented Subway Moon, featuring I.C.E. juniors and seniors playing with Roy Nathanson and Sotto Voce, on February 3, 2014.
Subway Moon's initial incarnation was in 2007, when Nathanson began writing poems set in New York City's subway system and inspired by its underground constituency. He scored the poems for his veteran band, The Jazz Passengers/Sotto Voce, and filmmaker Andrew Gurian created video interpretations for the music. The first public performances were at MassMOCA in North Adams, Massachusetts (November 17, 2007), and Joe's Pub at New York City's Public Theater (November 30, 2007). Nathanson's poems were published by Buddy's Knife jazzedition (Cologne, 2007), and the band released a Subway Moon CD in 2009 (produced by Hugo Dwyer and distributed by ENJA Records). Nathanson then realized that he could include his own high-school music students in both the writing and performing aspects of Subway Moon and that exchanges could be arranged with students from other cities. Versions of Subway Moon were also performed at Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium (October 2010) and the Saalfelden (Austria) Jazz Festival (2010).
The subway theme provides cultural/environmental anchor—a common ground from which students and audiences can meet across geographical boundaries. Our (musicians, students, filmmakers, audience) experiences prove that the underground/subway/metro prompts allegories for lives above ground. Subway culture—part myth, part reality—is revealed as a universal urban mentality. The subway has become both the starting point for a collaborative process among the students and professionals as well as its end point, the public concert. It would seem that the construct of urban public transportation is more commonplace than that of the formal concert: for many of the students—and for many of their audience--Subway Moon is their maiden introduction to music presented on a stage in a hall.
Student input has so far been limited to the musical side of Subway Moon. Gurian and Nathanson's intent is to include students in the design and production of the visual component of the project as well. The proliferation of low-cost video equipment and visual-arts curricula in schools makes the integration of images by students an obvious addition to Subway Moon.
Subway Moon is about teenagers—their mind-set, their education, their experience, their talent; Subway Moon is about twenty-first-century jazz, poetry, and video images; Subway Moon is about the global force of music.
