CCSD Fine Arts Office

Thank you to the Gaillard Center and CCSD Fine Arts Alum Jordan Benton for providing such a fantastic opportunity for our students at Burke High School 💙🤍

Enjoy this gorgeous entry for the 2023 Southeastern Wildlife Exposition Junior Duck Stamp Competition, which was drawn by School of the Arts Junior Cameron Hazel using acrylic and colored pencils 🦆

📷: (IG)

Congratulations to these outstanding West Ashley High School Band students who made the 2023 South Carolina All-State Band and All-Region 4 Honor Band! 🎺🎷🥁🎶🏆

Congratulations to our CCSD Fine Arts teachers who are recipients of this year's Bosch Eco and STEM Teacher (BEST) Grant! 🎉🎉🎉

- Ellen Ambler, Charles Pinckney Elementary
- Schai Bilger, Memminger Elementary School
- Dayton Colie, School of the Arts Middle School
- Aaron Comstock, Mt. Zion Elementary
- Devlin Deveny, E.B. Ellington Elementary School
- Samantha Rogers, Charles Pinckney Elementary
- Micheline Tallicott, Academic Magnet High School
- Ivy Wadsworth, Mount Pleasant Academy
- Rachel Walls, C.E. Williams North Middle School

Congratulations to our Charleston Development Academy students on a great performance! 🎶💜🤍

Ms. Perez's Art students at Meeting Street Brentwood are hard at work on their next project. This time the class is studying/emulating the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

They've begun their mixed media projects by painting background patterns on cardboard using tempera cakes (with a strong emphasis on color choice, pattern, and creativity!) 🎨💚🤍

Be sure to follow Ms. Perez's class page, Meeting Street Brentwood Art, to see how the projects turn out! 👀

📷: (IG)

Congratulations to these outstanding Wando High School Band students who made the 2023 South Carolina All-State Band and All-Region 4 Honor Band! 🎺🎷🥁🎶🏆

Congratulations to these outstanding Laing Middle School students who made the 2023 South Carolina All-State Band and All-Region 4 Honor Band! 🎺🎷🥁🎶🏆

Congratulations to these outstanding Lucy Beckham High School students who made the 2023 South Carolina All-State Band, All-Region 4 Honor Band, and All-State Jazz Band! 🎺🎷🥁🎶🏆

Congratulations to these outstanding School of the Arts High School students who made the 2023 South Carolina All-State Band, All-Region 4 Honor Band, and All-State Jazz Band! 🎺🎷🥁🎶🏆

Congratulations to the following CCSD Fine Arts alumni, who are currently directing their own bands across the state of South Carolina (and had students auditioning for All-State/Region, as well!) 🎶🎺🎷🥁

David Keller, Greer High School
Nick Bruce, Southside High School
Amanda Pike, Lexington High School
Samantha Mumford, Cario Middle School 🙌
Kindall & Todd Smith, DuBose Middle School
A.J. Pace, T.L. Hanna High School
Josh Brown, Batesburg-Leesville Middle and High School
Matthew Kilby, Fort Dorchester High School
William Shaw, Greer Middle School

This group of distinguished CCSD graduates had a combined total of 24 All-State students (12 alternates) and 177 All-Region students in this year's ensembles 🤩

Thank you for all the great work you do with your students and for making the district proud 🥹❤️🎼

This week, the School of the Arts Dance Department begins another residency with two renowned instructors 🩰

The middle school students will be working with Jordan Benton, who extensive theatre and dance experience as a performer, choreographer, and instructor...and she's a CCSD Fine Arts alum!

The high school students will be working with Crystal Wellman, who has instructed, choreographed, and performed with ballet companies across the country.

To read more about these fantastic guest artists, click here: https://soadance.com/guest-artist-in-residency-2021-2022/

Congratulations to these outstanding JICHS Pride of the Island Band members 🧡💙🎶

Congratulations Addie and Jillian! 🎶💙🤍

A great opportunity for our Dance students! 🩰

Complexions Contemporary Ballet
Master Class & Mock Audition
January 26, 2023
5pm-6:30pm

The acclaimed dance company, Complexions, will be teaching a masterclass/mock audition combination for students on the stage at the Gaillard. The class will be taught by the Founder and Artistic Director, Desmond Richardson. Students will go through the audition process and leave with a better understanding.

$30 Registration Fee (full scholarships available upon request to [email protected])

CCSD Fine Arts Office CCSD Family & Community Engagement Gaillard Center

https://gaillardcenter.org/tickets/?WebEventId=complexionsmc

Enjoy some outstanding work from the Visual Art students at Lucy Beckham High School 🧡💚✍️

There may also be a certain Fine Arts Office team member who's EXTREMELY partial to the piece featuring his University of Kentucky Wildcats 😼🔵⚪️

📷: Lucy Beckham High School

MONDAY, JANUARY 23 (TONIGHT) and TUESDAY, JANUARY 24: See the School of the Arts High School Seniors perform their Senior Thesis.

Performances will begin at 5:00 PM and 7:00 PM on both days in the Rose Maree Myers Theatre. Admission is FREE.

The Charleston County School District will be overwhelmingly well represented in the 2023 South Carolina Region 4 Honor Band, which meets and performs February 17-18 Rollings Middle School of the Arts and Summers Corner Performing Arts Center 🎶🎺🎷🥁🏆

Students from Burke High School, James Island Charter High School, Lucy Beckham High School, R.B. Stall High School, School of the Arts Middle & High School, Wando High School, West Ashley High School, Camp Road Middle School, Cario Middle School, C E Williams Middle, Laing Middle School, and Moultrie Middle School were selected for a whopping 311 spots -- nearly 2/3 of all seated and alternate ensembles 🤯

Grades 6-8 Junior Region Band:
122 students selected from CCSD, including the 1st chair Flute, Bassoon, Clarinet, Alto Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone, Baritone Saxophone, Trumpet, Horn, Trombone, Tuba, and Percussion.

Grades 9-10 Clinic Region Band:
96 students from CCSD selected, including the 1st chair Bassoon, Alto Saxophone, Tenor Saxophone, Trumpet, Horn, Trombone, Bass Trombone, Euphonium, Tuba, and Timpani.

Grades 11-12 Senior Region Band:
93 students from CCSD selected, including the 1st chair Oboe, Bassoon, Clarinet, Bass Clarinet, Tenor Saxophone, Trumpet, Horn, Trombone, Bass Trombone, Euphonium, Percussion, and Timpani.

Congratulations to our outstanding CCSD Band students and teachers! 🤩

Congratulations to our Charleston County School District students who were selected to be part of this year's South Carolina All-State Jazz Ensembles, which will rehearse and perform March 2-4 at Newberry College 🎶🎺🎷🥁🏆

Students from James Island Charter High School, Lucy Beckham High School, School of the Arts High School, and Wando High School will make up over a third of both groups.

Congratulations to our outstanding CCSD Band students and teachers! 🤩

The Charleston County School District will be well represented in the 2023 South Carolina All-State Band, which meets and performs March 10-12 at Furman University 🎶🎺🎷🥁🏆

Students from James Island Charter High School, Lucy Beckham High School, School of the Arts Middle & High School, Wando High School, West Ashley High School, Camp Road Middle School, Cario Middle School, Laing Middle School, and Moultrie Middle School will make up nearly a quarter of the three ensembles (along with 29 alternate spots), which were selected from band students across the entire state.

Grades 6-8 Junior All-State Band:
24 students seated and 10 alternates from CCSD, including the 1st chair Oboe, Clarinet, and Tuba.

Grades 9-10 Clinic All-State Band:
32 students seated and 10 alternates from CCSD, including the 1st chair Oboe, Bass Clarinet, Alto Saxophone, Trumpet, Horn, Euphonium, and Tuba.

Grades 11-12 Senior All-State Band:
24 students seated and 9 alternates from CCSD, including the 1st chair Flute, Tenor Saxophone, Baritone Saxophone, Trombone, and Tuba.

Congratulations to our outstanding CCSD Band students and teachers! 🤩

Some highlights of the School of the Arts Middle School Orchestra and Bands, who performed last week for 5th & 8th Grade students from across the Charleston County School District at their school's 'Spend the Day at SOA' event! 🎺🎷🥁🎻🎶

🎥: Michael Christensen ( on IG)

Some photo and video highlights of the Wando Chorus working with composer/conductor Michael John Trotta (with bonus footage of Wando Chorus Director Eric Wilkinson skating circles around his students at Carolina Ice Palace)! 🎶🎹⛸️

📷 🎥: (IG) and (IG)

Some video and photo highlights of Ms. Mathias' students performing at Sullivan's Island Elementary's Coastal Night 🎶🌊

📷 🎥: (IG)

Way to go, Nathan! 🎺🎶🐅

Congrats to Nathan Freeman!!

Some photo highlights of students from Allegro Charter School of Music working and performing with Wose of Charleston! 🪘🎶

📷: (IG)

Perspective | 23 for ’23: Composers and performers to watch this year

Congratulations to CCSD Fine Arts alum Jonathon Heyward, who is featured today as one of the Washington Post's 23 composers and performers to watch in 2023! 🎻🎶❤️

Perspective | 23 for ’23: Composers and performers to watch this year This new class of artists is changing the sound of classical music.

Some video and photo highlights from School of the Arts Strings Senior Thesis performances 🎻🎶❤️

📷: Margaret Selby
🎥: Michael Christensen (jarbo101 on IG)

East Cooper Montessori Charter School students are already hard at work on their pieces for this year’s Spring Art Show ✍️🐧

Some photos of the Burke High School Band at this year's Martin Luther King Day parade in downtown Charleston 🎺🎷🥁🎶💙🤍

📷: Burke High School and Moja Photo Blog

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18 (TONIGHT) at 6:00 PM: Come see the School of the Arts High School Strings majors in their Senior Thesis performances 🎻🎶

The event will be held in the Rose Maree Myers Theatre at SOA. Admission is FREE!

Congratulations to Bands of Wando student Brendan Breen and Lucy Beckham High School Band student Nathan Freeman, who were named as two of the 12 finalists from across the state in the SCBDA 2023 Master Recital Competition! 🎺🎶

They will compete/perform at next month's South Carolina Music Educators Association conference in Columbia.

Thank North Charleston High School Art Department for creating such a wonderful tribute for Coach Knauer! 💙💛

Thank you School of the Arts seniors Abby Short and Emily Apostolico!

These students led a team of SOA Visual Artists and Charleston County School District teachers in painting a beautiful mural on the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post in Goose Creek (VFW Post 10256 & Auxiliary), which was completed over the weekend as part of their Senior Service Project 🇺🇸🎨❤️

📷: soa_visual_arts (IG)

Some end of semester highlights from Mr. Peterson’s Art students at Moultrie Middle School ✍️🤍💙

Congratulations to CCSD Fine Arts Alumni Charlton P. Singleton, Calvin Baxter, Kevin Hamilton, and Demetrius Doctor, who joined Quiana Parler at Carnegie Hall last week for 'Musical Explorations,' an educational performance series that develops lessons for K-12 students on Gullah culture and musical traditions 🎺🎶

This was the first performance at Carnegie Hall that New York school students have been able to attend since 2020. As you can see, they were more than a little excited about it 🤯❤️

📷: Richard Termine 🎥: Carnegie Hall

MLK Jr. on Jazz: The Soundtrack of Civil Rights

As our nation reflects today on Dr. Martin Luther King’s extraordinary legacy, we’d like to highlight one of his essays that’s not very well known, but still incredibly powerful.

Dr. King grew up in a home that was filled with music. His mother, Alberta King, served as the organist and choir director of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta during his childhood (and for decades afterward).

Alberta King instilled a love of music in her son, which he regarded as both a beautiful outlet and a force for change — especially the American art form of Jazz.

These sentiments resonate in an essay Dr. King penned for the inaugural Berlin Jazz Festival in 1964. The text is reprinted below along with a link to a great accompanying article from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

***

"God has wrought many things out of oppression. He has endowed his creatures with the capacity to create—and from this capacity has flowed the sweet songs of sorrow and joy that have allowed man to cope with his environment and many different situations.

Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life’s difficulties, and if you think for a moment, you will realize that they take the hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.

This is triumphant music.

Modern jazz has continued in this tradition, singing the songs of a more complicated urban existence. When life itself offers no order and meaning, the musician creates an order and meaning from the sounds of the earth which flow through his instrument.

It is no wonder that so much of the search for identity among American Negroes was championed by Jazz musicians. Long before the modern essayists and scholars wrote of racial identity as a problem for a multiracial world, musicians were returning to their roots to affirm that which was stirring within their souls.

Much of the power of our Freedom Movement in the United States has come from this music. It has strengthened us with its sweet rhythms when courage began to fail. It has calmed us with its rich harmonies when spirits were down.

And now, Jazz is exported to the world. For in the particular struggle of the Negro in America there is something akin to the universal struggle of modern man. Everybody has the Blues. Everybody longs for meaning. Everybody needs to love and be loved. Everybody needs to clap hands and be happy. Everybody longs for faith.

In music, especially this broad category called Jazz, there is a stepping stone towards all of these."

MLK Jr. on Jazz: The Soundtrack of Civil Rights By Mark Taylor “Jazz speaks for life. The Blues tell the story of life’s difficulties.”