Sigma Alpha Iota

Sai-natiOnal.ORg SummER 2014 PAN PIPES 7 By Judy CodeR t hanks to a Professional Development/ Education Grant (PDEG) from SAI Philanthropies, Inc., it was my honor to attend Brave Voice, a week-long workshop/retreat for musicians and poets, May 12-17, 2013. Brave Voice is part workshop, part retreat, in a secluded space where the wind sings through the trees and races up and down the unspoiled Kansas Flinthills. Just as the MacDowell Colony provided a creative space for SAI Honorary Member Louise Talma and Aaron Copland, Brave Voice provided a creative space for me. I am a professional musician, a performer, and composer in a wide variety of styles and genres. So oen, I find my day-to-day schedule makes it difficult for me to create larger works. I can rattle off choral responses for church, or a simple arrangement of a popular tune requested by my beginning strings students at school. But my desire to develop as a composer and create more substantial original material is easily derailed by the trivial distractions of work, family, and my performance schedule. In fact, my performance schedule interfered so with the Brave Voice schedule, I was forced to arrive late, leave and return, and leave early on the last day. Still, I was able to learn a great deal and write some exciting music. e two facilitators were a perfect team. One was a successful singer/songwriter and the other was Poet Laureate of Kansas. Together they provided opportunities for inspiration, developing lyrics and melody, caring for the voice and caring for self. Most important, they offered up a liberating approach to the creative process. I learned to honor that process, to give myself permission to create a space, and a time, and the conditions necessary to let the ideas flow. Lyrics, which I've oen found troublesome, began to flow easily through regular group sessions. I started several musical works, collaborated with others on theirs, and completed two pieces. One was a collaborative song I recorded a few months later on my tenth album. e other, inspired by the ethereal sound of the wind singing through my guitar strings, was a choral piece; I emailed it to my church choir director and we sang it that Sunday for Pentecost services. What a thrill. e most important thing I brought back from the experience was a new confidence – the knowledge that I can create the conditions that make it possible for me to compose any music I desire. If it is my wish to start work on an opera or a symphony, I have the tools to make that happen. I can set aside my own "Pan's Cottage," and let the muses sing to me. I am extremely grateful to SAI Philanthropies, Inc. for the Professional Development / Education Grant that made Brave Voice possible for me. Judy Coder is a graduate of Washburn University where she studied music education and voice. She was initiated into eta Chapter, served as president, and received the eta A Province Alumnae Leadership Award and the Sword of Honor. She has been an active member/ soloist with Topeka organizations and is a prolific composer/arranger, performing artist, and teacher in the public schools as well as the private studio. saI phIlanthropIes Philanthropies Grant Provides Opportunity for Composer F ounded in 1907, The MacDowell Colony is the oldest artists' colony in the United States. At its founding, the colony was an experiment with no precedent. It stands now having provided crucial time and space to more than 6,000 artists, including such notable names as Leonard Bernstein, Thornton Wilder, Aaron Copland, Milton Avery, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Alice Sebold, Michael Chabon, Suzan-Lori Parks, and many more. SAI financed the construction of Pan's Cottage in 1919 and maintains it via an SAI fund established in 1943. SAI presented a $75,000 gift to the MacDowell Colony in Summer 2007 to restore and pre- serve Edward MacDowell's music room. Pan's Cottage welcomes composers and other MacDowell Colony Fellows, just as it did in 1919 when completed with funds provided by SAI members. Its maintenance was endowed through an SAI fund established in 1943. In 1918 construction began on a cottage at a secluded New Hampshire artists' retreat where thousands of composers, writers and visual artists have come over the years to do their creative work in comfort and solitude. The idea for such a structure was proposed by Mary Christie of Delta Chapter. The SAI Convention body of 1916 (representing the 11 chapters then in existence) seized the challenge and agreed to raise the necessary funds. With the support of Marian MacDowell, widow of the famed American composer whose life and career inspired the founding of the Colony, the necessary resources were in hand in an aston- ishing two years. When the cottage was completed, it was given outright to the MacDowell Colony by SAI. That "cottage" is actually a handsome 3-story white house which can accommodate 12 art- ists, the largest residence facility at the Colony. It proudly bears the name "Pan's Cottage." At the 2006 Convention, SAI presented a $75,000 gift to the MacDowell Colony to restore and preserve Edward MacDowell's music room at Hillcrest on the grounds of the Colony. The gift was commemorated with a plaque a year later. It reads, "The preservation of Edward MacDow- ell's Music Room at Hillcrest was made possible by a generous gift from Sigma Alpha Iota Philanthropies, Inc. 2007." Brave Voice participants, from left: Kenneth Carr, Murphysboro, IL; Judy Coder, Topeka, KS; Dianna Burrup, Broken Arrow, OK; and Teresa Hernandez, Salina, KS. Pan's Cottage

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