From the 2000 Songwriter's Beat handout about 'our future plans':

- Plan to start a songwriting clinic series, encouraging performers to participate in sharing their creative process, exploring what factors nurture a creative environment (and identifying inhibiting factors) to begin facilitating a more productive and creatively satisfying musical life.

When I started the Songwriter's Beat in December 2000, I made a list of things I would like to see happen over the next few years:
1. to create a comfortable and supportive atmosphere
2. to encourage songwriters to try new songs
3. to create a Songwriter's Beat website
4. to record and release a CD of Songwriter's Beat writers and
5. to start a clinic series

Slowly but surely these things are coming to fruition: over 250 singer/songwriters have graced the stage, we have a website (thanks Racine!), we have the We'll Carry On CD released on West Street Records. With the re-emergence of the NewSongs Workshop, another one of my dreams is coming true.

We also have an email newsletter - make sure you sign up for that on the home page!

Future plans include:
1. songwriter resource webpage
2. creating an international network of songwriters
3. live videotaping
4. creating Songwriter's Beat CD series
5. offering podcasts
6. creating a songwriter's beat youtube channel

The Cornelia Street Cafe is at 29 Cornelia Street (between Bleecker and West 4th Sts) in Greenwich Village, NYC NY :: 212.989.9319

For more information and a local street map, please visit their website at corneliastreetcafe.com. The nearest subway stations are West Fourth Street (A, C, D, E, F, V) and Christopher Street (1).


Songwriter's Beat/ASCAP NewSongs Workshop

Thanks to The ASCAP Foundation, we are delighted to present the Songwriter's Beat/ASCAP NewSongs Workshop for ASCAP members.

The first workshop will meet on Saturday, December 6, 2008, from 11am - 4pm, with Mary Lee Kortes and Valerie Ghent. The focus of this workshop will be on New Songs! Hopefully we will be able to offer more workshops in 2009, watch this page for details!

NewSongs Workshop History
From January to April 2003 we held our first ongoing songwriter's workshop. A creative success, the workshop met every first Tuesday of the month from 6pm to 8pm. Sign up for performers started at 5:30pm

Things to keep in mind for the NewSongs workshop: Songs presented can be something written within the last month - finished or not - the idea is to try something new and encourage others to do the same.

WHY DO WE CARE ABOUT SINGERS?

"Why do we care about singers? Wherein lies the power of songs? Maybe it derives from the sheer strangeness of there being singing in the world. The note, the scale, the chord; melodies, harmonies, arrangements; symphonies, ragas, Chinese operas, jazz, the blues: that such things should exist, that we should have discovered the magical intervals and distances that yield the poor cluster of notes, all within the span of a human hand, from which we can build our cathedrals of sounds, is as alchemical a mystery as mathematics, or wine, or love. Maybe the birds taught us. Maybe not. Maybe we are just creatures in search of exaltation. We don't have much of it. Our lives are not what we deserve; they are, let us agree, in many painful ways deficient. Song turns them into something else. Songs shows us a world that is worthy of our yearning, it shows our selves as they might be, if we were worthy of the world."

from "The Ground Beneath Her Feet"
by Salman Rushdie


Songwriter's Beat/ASCAP NewSongs Workshop
Saturday, December 6
11am-4pm
Cornelia Street Cafe
Free of charge - no outside food or drink please -




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