Grammy Nomination for Newark Native and Jazz Legend: Experience Antoinette Montague

NSA receives $1,000 donation from Artist Laura Daigle during her Kaleidoscope Tour

On October 20th NSA was presented with a donation @ Prudential Center in the amount of $1,000, special thanks to artist Laura Daigle & The Price Fund & Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.

Dr. Patricio Molina, NSA Alumni and Head of the Student Conservatory at Carnegie Hall

Dr. Patricio Molina delivered a moving performance at Carnegie Hall, centered around the theme of peace amidst global conflicts.

Newark School of the Arts (NSA) and Sharron Miller’s Academy for the Performing Arts (SMAPA) Announce A Joint Partnership.

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:  Carmen Santos-Robson,

Associate Director,

Newark School of the Arts

Phone: 973-642-0133 Ext.  20

Email:  Carmen@newarkschoolofthearts.org

Newark School of the Arts (NSA) and Sharron Miller’s Academy

for the Performing Arts (SMAPA) Announce A Joint Partnership.

Newark, NJ, August 29-Sharron Miller, SMAPA’s Founder/Director and Larry Tamburri, Executive Director of NSA are pleased to announce the partnership between these two arts education organizations. As the new Chair of NSA’s Dance Department, Miller hopes to bring the same level of artistic excellence to the NSA Dance Division as exists in its Montclair home. Although both organizations have their separate locations, both Tamburri and Miller hope to share not only teaching artists, but programming as well.

NSA Board President, Lori Scott-Pickens said “"The NSA welcomes Ms. Sharron Miller to our School. Ms. Miller, a is renowned career Dancer, Instructor, and founder of SMAPA. We are happy to have her as the new Chair of the NSA Dance Department.  Ms. Miller brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in dance pedagogy.  We are excited about the possibilities and look forward to her working with dance students in the greater Newark community at NSA."

“Our association with her and SMAPA will signify that we are offering quality dance instruction. An added benefit to this partnership is that we will be able to offer some programs at SMAPA in Montclair beginning with Early Childhood Music.” said Larry Tamburri, NSA Executive Director.

As the new Chair of NSA’s Dance Division, Miller is looking forward to generating renewed interest in dance among children, teens and adults through new program offerings like Dance with Me (ages 2-3 with caregiver), Afro-Caribbean (ages 10-adult) and Contemporary (teens).  These classes are in addition to our standard offerings of ballet, modern and jazz. Miller says, “Dance should be available to students at all stages of life”.

 There will be an opportunity to meet Sharron on Saturday, September 10, between 11am - 1pm at the Newark School of the Arts Open House, 89 Lincoln Park in Newark.

We are grateful for the support of the various funders who have supported our individual efforts including the Turrell Fund, Prudential Foundation, PWC, PNC foundation Victoria Foundation, Geraldine R. Dodge, Stone Foundation of New Jersey, National Endowment for the Arts and theNew Jersey Council on the Arts among other contributors.

Sharron Miller is Founder/Director of Sharron Miller’s Academy for the Performing Arts (SMAPA), an arts education organization whose mission is to provide comprehensive, inclusive developmental training in dance and related theater arts to children, teens, adults and seniors. She is a former Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater soloist and veteran of seven Broadway shows. She has appeared on television, film, and hundreds of radio and television commercials. She is a member of Actors’ Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild, and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

Ms. Miller, who attended The Juilliard School, is committed to enriching the lives of young people through the arts. Her early training began with the late Fred Danieli, founder and director of the Garden State Ballet, who taught her the value of self-discipline, self-respect, and a commitment to excellence. Ms. Miller’s educational focus is to foster, nurture and encourage skill building, self-discipline, self-esteem and creativity in every student.

She served on the faculty of Renaissance Middle School in Montclair for 13 years where SMAPA provided the dance and drama program for 6th, 7th and 8th grade students during the school day. This program was developed with multi-year leadership support from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, praised by the State of New Jersey as an “outstanding arts education model,” and eventually fully funded by the Montclair Board of Education. Ms. Miller has also served on the faculty of Montclair Kimberley Academy, Far Brook School, and has been affiliated with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center as an arts-in-education consultant/partner.

At SMAPA, she not only continues to train hundreds of students yearly, but also continues to develop her arts enrichment programs and community outreach, which includes working in partnership with seven K-3 elementary schools and Rosa Parks High School for the Fine and Performing Arts in Paterson; North Star High School in Newark providing a yearlong dance residency for 10th, 11th and 12th grade students; creating a 6-week full-day arts program, Prime Time Summer Arts, for children 6-14 in association with the Montclair Department of Recreation and Cultural Affairs; and adapting Prime Time Summer Arts to a half-day theme-based preschool summer arts program for children 3-5.

SMAPA receives generous financial support from foundations including the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Victoria Foundation, the Stone Foundation of New Jersey, the Turrell Fund, National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, among other contributors. Ms. Miller resides in Montclair, New Jersey with her daughter, Jaimie and granddaughter, Jubilee.

The Newark School of the Arts (NSA) changes the lives of youth through access to quality education in the performing and visual arts. We accomplish this by providing excellence in sequential education and training, offering an emerging state of the art learning environment, accepting students of all ages and abilities, and partnering with other successful arts educators while maintaining affordability and accessibility. The School provides high-level training in the performing and visual arts. Since 1968, the school has offered instruction for everyone with an interest in the arts regardless of age, talent and financial resources. NSA is a family and community-oriented school that has served over 50,000 individuals since its inception, and provides education for 750 students each week. The school serves children from age 3 months to senior citizen through long-term sequential training that often contributes to lifelong learning and professional careers in the arts. Many additional students have benefited from individualized instruction and became successful in other fields of endeavor. Through the emphasis of comprehensive arts education, all students are given opportunities to perform and exhibit in formal and informal settings. Specialized instruction is offered on all musical instruments, voice, music, dance (ballet, tap, jazz, modern, hip-hop, zumba, social dance), drama and the visual arts (drawing and painting, acrylic painting, clay hand-building, cartooning, jewelry design, digital photography, portfolio development). Ensemble training opportunities include dance workshops, string, wind, guitar, and percussion groups. Special programs are available for talented students and children of preschool age. Individuals with special needs and senior citizens are integrated into NSA programs. In addition to on-site training, the school also serves area preschools, public, charter and private schools as well as other organizations through special arrangement. The international faculty with degrees and advanced degrees from leading conservatories is chosen with a view toward professional competence and ability to work effectively with children and adults. Teachers strongly identify with the mission of the school. Some have remained with NSA for many years. Newark School of the Arts supported in-part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Department of State, and funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.  The School received a 2016, 2017 and 2020 "Citation of Excellence" and is designated a "Major Presenting and Service Organization" by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Other major support comes from the City of Newark (CDBG/HUD), Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, The Prudential Foundation and Prudential Financial, Victoria Foundation, Turrell Fund, William Randolph Hearst Foundation, Inter-Atlantic Group, and Wells Fargo.

### 

A Musical Legacy Grows in Newark

A Musical Legacy Grows in Newark  

by Helen S. Paxton

Family legacies take many different forms. Some families' names adorn buildings, and some are memorialized in businesses and charitable foundations. But family legacies don't need to be big or splashy, and many smaller ones contribute daily to the health, wellbeing, and joy found in countless communities across the country.

            For the Scott family of Newark, honoring their beloved mother, grandmother, and great grandmother Ursuleen A. Scott is a legacy built around a love of music, and a belief in the life-changing power of arts education. Scott's daughter Lori Scott Pickens, newly appointed president of the Newark School of the Arts (NSA), describes the NSA’s Ursuleen A. Scott Memorial Scholarship Fund -- "we have created a powerful way of connecting the generations of our family around this belief, while also giving back to the community that was my mother's home for her entire life." 

            This past year the family raised the most ever for scholarships at NSA, a community music school that has been an integral player in Newark’s famed arts community for more than 50 years.  Scott scholarships support tuition for low-income students, enabling them to share in the joy and life enrichment that are well proven byproducts of music education. “My grandmother’s interest in music has touched all of us -- she was a force,” says          

Ursuleen Scott’s granddaughter Dr. Theri’ Pickens, Bates College Professor of English.

The Scott scholarship fund had a humble start in 2013.  Soon after their mother and grandmother Ursuleen Scott’s passing the year before, members of the large family convened to figure out how best to honor her memory and pay tribute to her influence on them and so many others. A scholarship fund at NSA appeared a perfect fit, and an upcoming Lincoln Park Music Festival, nearby in downtown Newark, a perfect starting place.  With “made from scratch” lemonade and iced tea, the scholarship fund was off to a healthy start with more than $1,200 in profits. 

          In the years since, the fund has raised tens of thousands, and impacted the lives of dozens of young music students at NSA.  Current recipients include girls and boys studying piano, violin, cello, French horn, and voice.   The recipients must be Newark residents whose families are unable to afford lessons, and a preference is given to those who are considering music as a profession.  However, as Pamela Scott, one of the eldest of Ursuleen’s 12 children, commented, “there are no hard feelings if other paths are chosen,” as most know that “music is a very challenging way to make a living.”

Pandemic times make for creative ideas, in fundraising as well as other pursuits.  Departing in 2021 from the annual Spring fund-raising musicale/reception which they began presenting in 2018, the family organized a virtual musicale to showcase current scholarship recipients as well as guest artists.  “It was our most successful event ever,” Scott-Pickens noted, and continues to bring in donations, as the program remains accessible on YouTube.

Who was Ursuleen Scott who had such an outsize influence on her family?  The lifelong Newark resident was born in 1930 to immigrant parents from St. Kitts, West Indies -- her father a lawyer and her mother a homemaker.  Encouraged by her parents, Ursula and John O’Laughlin, Ursuleen, the youngest of four siblings, was drawn to music at an early age.   By the time she reached adulthood she was proficient in piano and six additional instruments, and also studied voice.  

            As a young woman she met James Scott, also an accomplished musician who played clarinet and saxophone professionally, and they married soon after.

 Music was thoroughly embedded in the Scott family life. This included Ursuleen’s daily piano practice -- Debussy’s Clair de Lune, which Pamela Scott noted was her mother’s “favorite piece,” was   heard frequently.  Pamela also remembers that mother and father “played together all the time...everything from classics to jazz and more.”  Ursuleen gave voice and piano lessons both at home and around town, and also played the  organ for services at local funeral homes.    Lori Scott-Pickens remembers her mother as having a discerning ear  – “if you think Simon Cowell is a tough judge of talent, you haven't met my mother," she said.

            On Sundays, children were required to watch Leonard Bernstein conduct the New York Philharmonic in the popular television program “Young People's Concerts,” an entertaining journey through centuries of music history that created a musical legacy for an entire generation of American children.

For the Scotts, music at home was a natural complement to music at school -- at that time music was still considered an important field of study in most public schools. Pamela Scott, a retired nurse, and expert in early childhood education, laments that music is no longer considered essential in public schools – “all the more reason for low-income children to have access to affordable or free music instruction at schools such as NSA.”  

            Pamela Scott’s  belief in the importance of music study has been echoed in numerous academic studies that document the positive effects of music on educational outcomes.  “Music has the power to transform a family and especially a child,” noted Curtland Fields, CEO of the Turrell Fund, which assists NSA and many other community and arts organizations in New Jersey.  In fact, Fields added, music study, especially Suzuki violin, “may be the single most dramatic way to improve a child’s life.”

 Professor Theri’ Pickens played Suzuki violin as a child, and music has always been important to her.  Her grandmother would be pleased to know that during stay-at-home pandemic times,  Prof. Pickens began a new musical adventure.  In her article “The Singing Professor,” recently published in  Inside Higher Education, she shares how online singing instruction has helped her in her profession. “The lessons I learned as a student apply not only to me in my classrooms as an instructor, but also to me as a pedagogue,” she writes.

      Peyton Scott, the eldest of Ursuleen’s grandchildren, played flute in her youth and attributes her broad knowledge of the arts to the enduring influence of her grandmother. “She constantly encouraged us to explore and try new things – and was fond of saying ‘walk with an openness to everything that life has to offer’.”

Pamela Scott, Peyton’s mother, continues to embrace her mother’s openness to experience.  As a retiree, she has been studying violin at NSA, picking up where she left off many years ago to pursue a career and raise a family.  She enjoys weekly lessons at NJS and looks forward to playing in an orchestra someday.  Her brother Zachary is another in the tradition of musical Scotts, playing clarinet and saxophone. 

Expanding the Ursuleen A Scott Memorial Scholarship’s impact is a shared Scott family endeavor. This year family members will gather again in late November to plan and organize.  Committees will be formed, assigned to different tasks  -- managing donations, publicity, and event planning. Monthly meetings will be set, progressing later to weekly and finally daily meetings as the main event -- the spring musicale -- approaches.  Each year’s ultimate goal is to raise more funds, thereby enabling more children to afford quality music lessons at NSA.

            In her new role at NSA as board president, Lori Scott-Pickens is eager to share her family’s success with others who may want to pursue something similar.  “It takes a commitment to work, and to work consistently” she says, “in order to make a truly meaningful difference.”  For the citizens of Newark -- and for many years to come -- Ursuleen A. Scott and the Scott family will be associated with making a beautiful difference in the city.

To learn more about the Ursuleen A. Scott Scholarship fund, please visit 

www.newarkschoolofthearts.org/donate 

or contact Carmen Santos-Robson  973.642.0133 ext. 20

Carmen@newarkschoolofthearts.org               

September 15, 2021

# # # # 

Newark School of the Arts Celebrates 50th Anniversary April 10 at NJPAC

media contacts: 

Carmen Santos-Robson carmen@newarkschoolofthearts.org 973.642.0133,

or Helen Paxton ahpassoc@gmail.com 973.714.0776

for immediate release

Newark School of the Arts Celebrates  50th Anniversary April 10 at NJPAC

Performance to Feature NSA Alumnus Savion Glover

 A half century of “changing lives through the power of the arts” in Newark will be celebrated at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC) on Tues., April 10, when supporters, friends, alumni, faculty and current students gather to mark Newark School of the Arts’ (NSA) milestone anniversary.

World renowned tap dancer and NSA alumnus Savion Glover, whose dance lessons began at the school at age seven, headlines the presentation at NJPAC’s Victoria Theater.  He will be joined by other dancers, musicians and performers, many of them NSA alumni, for a variety showcase.

“I love the Newark School of the Arts and what it does for our city’s young people,” said Glover, who has made it a priority throughout his career to nurture the talents of young dancers and musicians.  High quality, affordable instruction and opportunities for Newark students in visual and performing arts have been the core mission of the school since its founding in 1968.

In addition to Glover, featured performers include vocalists Frankie Negrón, A-Larenee Davis, Carolyn Braga, and Gabriel De Los Santos; pianist-composer and NSA Conservatory Director Patricio Molina; pianists Jeffrey Swann (current NSA artist-in-residence) , Nadine Herman (NSA music director) and Alan Broadbent;  New Jersey Symphony Orchestra principal instrumentalists Erick Wyrick and Jonathan Spitz; and NSA board trustee, bass Kevin Maynor, who will perform a work by Pulitzer-prize winning New Jersey composer George Walker.

The performances will be preceded by a cocktail reception and auction of distinguished wines and followed by a formal dinner. Proceeds from the event will be used to strengthen the organizational capacity of the school and support expanded initiatives.  Those initiatives include building upgrades for the school’s home at 89 Lincoln Park and the NSA Conservatory Division, a new full-day Saturday pre-college division.

NSA supporters Kathy Grier and her husband Mark Grier, vice chairman of Prudential Financial, Inc. and member of its Board of Directors, are gala co-chairs.  During the evening, the NSA’s success will be celebrated with stories of many of the school’s distinguished and successful alumni.  Among them are internationally-acclaimed opera singer, countertenor Derek Lee Ragin; 2017 MacArthur “genius” award winner, composer Tyshawn Sorey; concert pianist Hsing Ay-Hsu; jazz vocalist Cynthia Holiday; stage, film and television actress Kim Hawthorne; and salsa singer Frankie Negrón.

NSA currently offers individual, group and online classes, attended each week by 800 students of all ages.  NSA’s distinguished faculty teaches comprehensive courses in instrumental and vocal music, theory and composition, music production, theatre, dance, graphic and fine arts.

Students come primarily from the city of Newark, but also from surrounding communities.  NSA offers substantial scholarship assistance for more than half of its current students.

“We are immensely excited about showcasing the very best of what NSA offers our community,” noted Curtis Johnson, board chair of NSA, “and we are deeply indebted to the many sponsors who have made our 50th anniversary event possible.”  In addition to Prudential Financial, Inc. as the Lead Sponsor, major supporters include Inter-Atlantic Management Services, LLC; Kathy and Mark Grier, Cognizant, and PwC.

Tickets for the stage performance are available at $54 and $29 and for the entire event at $500; they are available for purchase at www.njpac.org. Information on full event tickets is available by contacting NSA Development Director Sherrie Thaler at 973.642.0133.  Media inquiries should be directed to Carmen Santos-Robson at 973.642.0133   or Helen Paxton at 973.714.0776.   
  

# #  # # #

NSA Voice Student Makes Bow Ties For Dogs

Read the Article Here:

https://nypost.com/2018/02/17/this-kid-makes-shelter-puppies-look-fabulous

Watch Video Here:

http://newjersey.news12.com/story/36405796/newark-boy-makes-bow-ties-for-displaced-hurricane-dogs#.WpCQyGxQIko.email

Mosaics Unveiling

Click to View Announcement

Newark Stage Article

October-November 2017 Newsletter

Click Here for Newsletter

Introductory Video About Newark School of the Arts