Note: this program has concluded. Please contact Joyce if you are interested in this activity.
Point Reyes Music Center announces two open music studio Creativity in Community sessions per week, to encourage everyone in the community and beyond to come together during pressing times to draw, share poems and songs-in-progress, play instruments, or simply listen to beautiful masterworks."We have created a wonderful resource center downtown [upstairs at Cowgirl Creamery, kitty-corner from the Dance Palace] with a huge LP collection, books about music to browse, many instruments to dabble on -- even a vintage accordion, and we want more people to be able to use it as a kind of creative drop-in center. We started this at the Music at the Center festival in 2007 and it was so inspiring, I want to offer it as an addition to our downtown's ongoing group attractions," says coordinator Joyce Kouffman. "We have great food, friendly storefronts, Point Reyes Books and authors, Dance Palace events, Toby's events, KWMR marathons, TakeTwo movies, and now, Creativity in Community sessions. This will be a place to enjoy either 'up-time' or a little 'down-time' in the downtown, depending on who is there and what is happening. Participants may choose. For instance, people might like to eat downtown and come by to relax with music before going home or for a warm-up listening session before a concert at the Dance Palace that evening. We'll start with Wednesdays and Sundays 5:00-7:00 p.m., just in time to get dinner downstairs at Cowgirl or around town. If people start steadily showing up, we will expand our hours," says Kouffman.
Joyce Kouffman, long-time Point Reyes resident and professional composer/improvisational multi-instrumentalist and life-long community music activist, has been director and main instructor of private lessons and classes since the Tomales Bay Foods barn was converted from Toby's Haybarn in 1997. "I performed for the barn-raising party with the walls half-finished in the cold with a big cheese hat on my head. The building has maintained its open, family feeling, even as it has become nationally known. I want to carry that over to music-making for all of us here. As shopping activities become more selective, we will still need to browse. We can call this 'music browsing'!"