Students at the Fine Arts Center are artistically talented and wish to take an intensive pre-professional program of study. Students apply and are selected on the basis of talent, interest, and commitment to their discipline and study. Classes at the Fine Arts Center are in session five days a week, in the morning or afternoon for 110 minutes of instruction. Students are provided advanced comprehensive arts instruction in the areas of architecture, theatre, technical theater, dance, visual arts (design, painting, printmaking, 3D metals, ceramics and photography), music (voice, strings chamber music, jazz, woodwinds & brass, and percussion), creative writing, or digital filmmaking. When students are not attending FAC throughout the week, they spend the remainder of their time at their home high school in their academic classes. Each year over 400 students attend the Fine Arts Center. 91.5% of the students go on to higher education. Fine Arts Center students have averaged over 8 million in scholarships over the past few years.

I taught music theory and history, and composed many pieces for students and staff, from 1988-2019. If you are of high school age and have a serious interest in an art form, you owe it to yourself to investigate this incredible program. You will have great teachers, great student colleagues, and a school culture and administration that treasures and nurtures your artistic drive.

The mission of the Sigal Music Museum is to celebrate, entertain, and inform audiences of all ages about the incredibly diverse musical cultures of the world, through a large, impeccably maintained collection of historically significant instruments. Their vision is to be the leading center for preserving and celebrating musical narratives from Appalachian, European and Non-Western cultures through educational programs, exhibits, and performances by distinguished artists. This is a truly world-class example of a very uncommon sort of institution. The SMM hosts a regular schedule of a wide variety of live concerts, often employing historic instruments from the collection (check out the second half of my 6 March 2020 concert at the Museum). The Sigal Music Museum and its founders have been ardent supporters of the Fine Arts Center for many years.

The Fine Arts Center Partners is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting and increasing the visibility of the Fine Arts Center of Greenville County Schools, South Carolina’s oldest public high school program for the performing, literary and visual arts. The Partners is an entirely volunteer-run organization, allowing us to donate 100% of all funds raised directly to the school to help fund the extraordinary arts education offered there.  Partners membership is open to parents of past and present FAC students, FAC alumni and all community members who wish to promote the goal of the Fine Arts Center.

The Greenville Jazz Collective is a non-profit organization started in 2012 by highly-respected members of the jazz community in Greenville, SC.  Through education outreach in the community and regular performance in an environment that is best suited for listening, the mission of the GJC is to create a greater awareness and appreciation for jazz music and history in the Upstate for generations to come. I know many of the fine musicians who run this organization. They are driven and effective in the promotion and teaching of jazz in Greenville.

The Wheel Sessions is a jazz performance series hosted in Greenville South Carolina. Performances begin at 7:30 pm, and are held in front of an intimate listening audience. There is a $15 entrance fee, which includes two sets of music and a complimentary beverage.  Attendees may BYOB. 

 Now in its fourth year of presenting concerts, 80 sessions to date, The Wheel Sessions has established itself as the premier location for hearing great jazz in the Upstate. Its musicians regularly represent a wide radius, extending to Charlotte, Asheville, Atlanta, and Charleston. Semi-annual special event concerts feature international artists - Jon Faddis, Ignacio Berroa, and James Carter, Jorge Garcia, and Marc Black

It has been a joy to collaborate with the visionary musicians that lead Greenville’s only professional opera company. GLOW is dedicated to progressive values and promoting dialogue about today’s most pressing issues through performances of classic opera, operetta, and musical theater. From the GLOW website:

Glow strives to be the country’s most innovative leader in the fusion of opera, operetta and musical theatre. Glow seeks to produce nationally recognized work that is socially relevant, and serve as a unique example of utilizing theatre for social change. Glow annually provides a wide array of opera, operetta and musical theatre performances each season. Glow ’s Summer Festival features three fully produced performances and one to three cabaret performances. Glow ’s Raising Voices Series consists of three to five concerts or chamber operas each year. Glow strives to partner with regional and international artists to bring diverse, innovative and challenging programming to South Carolina.

S.C. Bach is South Carolina's premier performing arts organization that focuses on quality performances of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries.  S.C. Bach's mission is to promote Bach's music through affordable concerts, lectures, and educational events throughout the state.  S.C. Bach seeks to engage with schools and communities in ways that energize and ennoble audiences.

The Artistic Director of SC Bach, Dr. David Rhyne, is a friend and a fabulous musician. Any SC Bach concert is worth hearing, especially as authentic performances of the music of J. S. Bach such as theirs are not all that common.

Even if record stores weren’t dropping like flies and there were more to compete for the honor, Horizon Records would still win the title of Planet Earth’s Freaking Coolest Record Store, hands down. Owned & operated by my good buddy Gene Berger, they are still standin’ and still rockin’, with an expert staff to help you find exactly the recording you need. And as lovers of music themselves, they understand that it is a true need - right up there with food, water, and shelter. If you are interested in classical, jazz, ethnic musics, blues, or anything not in the commercial mainstream, this is the store for you. A great place to idle away an hour looking for that hidden treasure in the used bin.

I have a number of my piano and chamber music things with Manduca and they are a delight to deal with. They feature strong, classy material and excellent editing. From their website:

Our mission is to provide you with high quality, versatile, and artistically pleasing sheet music and scores. We offer chamber and solo music for brass, woodwinds, strings, piano, and big band jazz. We produce pedagogical materials for teachers of all levels such as our Successful Studio Teaching manual; The Brass Instruments: A Reference Manual; and Dr. Tinka Knopf de Esteban’s Piano Curriculum Guide and its accompanying materials. We are fortunate to represent and be associated with some of the finest composers and arrangers. All catalog items have been described as fully as possible to help you get a sense of the material.

Tetractys Publishing (London) is an especially high-class publisher of music for flutes of every kind - piccolo, C flute, alto, bass, baroque flute, and more, in every imaginable ensemble. Their founder - Dr. Carla Ress - is an active and accomplished performer, clinician, composer, and editor. An especially good source of new music for flute and repertoire for low flutes. From the Tetractys website:

The company was officially launched by its Director, Carla Rees in August 2012, following several years of publishing the rarescale series on an ad hoc basis under the Tetractys name. Tetractys aims to make available to the public some of the 650+ pieces that have been composed for Carla Rees and rarescale alongside music written for other specialist low flutes performers. In August 2011, rarescale’s music library was destroyed in a fire in the London riots. After a year of relocating scores and rebuilding the library, the idea behind the company was to safeguard the repertoire and to help ensure that it didn't get lost again if disaster struck.

Reed Pros is the venture of oboist and 1995 FAC graduate Tanya Galloway. Reed Pros specializes in handmade oboe reeds for beginners to professionals. Each part of the reed making process is done in-house to ensure the highest quality standards are met, and you will find beautifully handmade oboe reeds ready to play. Oboe reed blanks are also available for the student learning to scrape or for the busy professional. If you are making your own reeds, Tanya has oboe staples, oboe reed making thread and more. Please visit her blog for helpful tips on oboe playing and oboe reed making tips.

This band is the coolest thing going. It’s a remarkable blend of elements from jazz and various world musics, Middle Eastern influences especially. What I admire especially about this work is how the mixing of the materials is truly organic - it never feels artificially pasted together like a novelty device. The success of this synthesis has everything to do with the deep understanding of the different idioms among the players. From the FPR website:

Since 2001, Free Planet Radio has been bringing its exciting and innovative world-jazz-classical music blend to both concert stages and classrooms.  Based in Asheville NC, this musical partnership began with a clear mission statement as “the shared vision of three multi-instrumentalists exploring the infinite and seamless relationships between musical cultures through the universal language of sound.” Free Planet Radio performances expertly weave the improvisatory element of jazz, and the subtleties and harmonic vocabulary of Western classical music, with Middle Eastern, Indian and North African melodic and rhythmic structures. Performing mostly original compositions, even while playing extremely complex melodies and time signatures, the trio always maintains a sense of accessibility, spontaneity and easy engagement with the audience. Free Planet Radio consists of two-time Grammy winner Eliot Wadopian leaping effortlessly between rhythm and melody on electric and string basses; River Guerguerian on an extensive array of global percussion instruments including Middle Eastern frame drums and doumbek, the Indian kanjira, African djembe, and Western drum set; and Chris Rosser exploring melody on the 17-stringed Indian dotar, Turkish cumbus oud, guitar, piano and melodica.