Osseo students learn from artist-in-residence

Osseo Area Learning Center students recently were able to experience a professional hip hop artist-in-residence to earn elective credits.

The District 279 Foundation funded a grant for students to learn about the music industry, what’s involved with being a musical entrepreneur, and how to utilize low-cost musical equipment to create their own beats.

Carnage the Executioner shared his life-long musical entrepreneurship journey, taught the students about songwriting and music creation, and encouraged students to pursue their own musical journeys.

Birch Grove School for the Arts hosts guest artist

Fourth and fifth grade students at Birch Grove School for the Arts celebrated the culmination of their first trimester art troupes with a special guest artist visit on December 5 and 10. 

The school applied for and received the opportunity to have a visitor from the Project Amplify Noteworthy guest artist program through the MacPhail Center for Music. 

The artist, Terrell X, is a rapper, beat box and hip hop artist, and he visited with the school’s older students to give them an interactive performance full of student participation, input and enthusiasm. 

Terrell X answered student questions about his career as a performer and art educator, shared about the equipment he uses, taught students different beat box sounds and rhythms and took song requests to create his own unique spin on them. He shared with students that working with others helps him to be the best version of himself as a performer and educator.

“Listening to other musicians and collaborating with people are like the system updates to my app,” he said. “When I go to different places, talk to different people and experience different things, and that allows my programming to get better each time.”