The answers reflect excellence standards as set by the Music Educators National Conference and published in The School Music Program: A New Vision

What are the principles of your music program?
The years before kindergarten are critical for children’s musical development.

• All children have musical potential that they ought to explore daily
• Young children are capable of developing critical thinking skills through musical ideas
• Children should experience age-appropriate musical activities and materials—created and modeled by trained, enthusiastic and responsive adults
• Young children should not be encumbered with the need to meet performance goals—learning should be process-oriented (exceptions include skits, sing-alongs, and the Suzuki method of private instruction which encourages performance on piano, violin or guitar)

What is your preschool’s music curriculum?
Developmentally appropriate early music experiences should occur in safe, teacher-supported environments where children can “work” at the skills relevant to them. Children need:

• Individual time with musical instruments and materials
• Group music time to experience the social and interactive benefits
• Enthusiastic encouragement for students’ questions and suggestions—which stimulate their critical thinking skills, confidence, and leadership abilities

Who sets the music curriculum and monitors facilitation?
Ideally, your chosen school would employ a Music Specialist trained in early-childhood development to provide musical expertise and model music education for the child-care staff.

Effective music teaching in the prekindergarten should:

• Support the child’s total development—physical, emotional, social & cognitive
• Recognize the wide range of “normal” development and the need to differentiate instruction to address different learning styles—such as visual, aural, or kinesthetic.
• Provide daily opportunities to explore sound through singing, moving, listening, and playing instruments—as well as introductory experiences in verbalization and visualization of musical ideas
• Encourage active participation (neurological development is insufficiently supported by the passive entertainment of children offered by CDs, TV, or video)
• Be integrated with children’s most important role models—their parents and family

What is the music literature?
Young children need to build a repertoire of songs they can sing, in order to work on their vocabulary, memory, and independence. Selected songs should be of age-appropriate and include:

• Traditional children’s songs
• Folk songs from a variety of cultures
• Classical Music with simple and repetitive melodic
and/or rhythmic themes
• Varied lyric, rhythmic, melodic and harmonic patterns

SINGING, INSTRUMENTS, & DANCE
Children, ages 3-6, can develop “BASIC MUSIC COMPETENCY”, meaning they can replicate songs with accurate melody, rhythm, and physical coordination.

VOCABULARY
Children develop their use of 300+ words. Group singing can expand vocabulary, enhance speech technique and build memory skills.

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Children are learning to expand their peer interactions: the repetition of songs builds self-confidence and interactive communication skills expand while playing music with adults and peers.

CRITICAL THINKING
As musical patterns are established and then varied, children learn to compare and contrast verses, instruments, movements, and their independent actions. When teachers ask for ideas for variations, or adapt a child’s ideas to the song, children develop their creativity and problem-solving skills.

Also under consideration: Americans for the Arts has proposed appointing a senior-level administration official with an arts portfolio, along the lines of Leonard Garment of the Nixon administration, August Heckscher under John F. Kennedy or Roger L. Stevens under Lyndon B. Johnson. Since a Jan. 16 report in The Los Angeles Times much of the speculation about the agency’s next chairman has focused on Michael C. Dorf, a lawyer who served on Mr. Obama’s arts-policy team during the campaign and was an adviser to the transition.

Would you like to speak out about what you need as an artist? Or about the importance of movies, music and art in your life? If so, I urge you to leave a comment here. I’ll post all comments meaningful comments here and on appropriate networks like mybarackobama.com and Organizing for America.

Whether it will sway the outcome of the presidential race no one can know, but the ad certainly seems to encapsulate the fact that Mr. Obama has emerged as the darling of the advertising world’s creative set.

Pop Culture Videos for Obama:
“Yes We Can” – written and produced by Black-Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am, Jesse Dylan (son of Bob) and Mike Jurkovac, a former VP-director of integration at FCB. According to Viral Video Chart, at press time it had garnered 10,540,006 views.

“Hope Changes Everything,” an Obama-as-rockstar video tribute created by Eric Hirshberg, president-chief creative officer of Deutsch, Los Angeles.

“Obama Girl” videos, courtesy of a group that included Ben Relles, who was once a staffer at Omnicom Group’s Agency.com.

The acronym RSS stands for many versions of the same thing.

• Really Simple Syndication
• Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)
• RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
• Real-time Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)

In this capacity for eight months, I had the honor of working with the Publication Directors, editors, designers and salespeople responsible for leading newsmagazines such as General Surgery News, Pharmacy Practice News, and Gastroenterology and Endoscopy News.

When Jesse and I met after one of his performances, he told me about the album he was recording, and his needs for a promotional package that reflected his Hip, Jazzy-Grunge style and communicated his multiple proficiencies as a teacher, composer, club performer, and event bandleader. We determined that my consultation services might provide the marketing strategy that could achieve these goals.

In our first consultation, we discussed critical elements of his personality and performance in relation to the promotional photos and website he had been using. Once he explained which pieces he wanted to improve, and the goals for his business, we drew up a preliminary agreement.

My first step was to draft a Creative Brief on Jesse’s brand…a crucial step to any marketing plan. Questions included:

Personality and Branding

Why are we Advertising?

How will we Achieve this?

Who is the Target?

What is the Main Idea of our Promotion?

What are the Product Truths?

Through answering these questions and others, we determined that Jesse’s income came from specific groups that had to be targeted independently: target event planners, academia, club owners, and talent agents. We contracted a marketing plan—and Jesse approved the fashion cutouts I selected—then we began outsourcing to freelancers.

Using the Creative Brief, I communicated the objectives of Jesse’s marketing campaign to the Fashion Stylist we hired. He went to Jesse’s home for a fashion/grooming consultation, selected pieces of Jesse’s wardrobe to keep or tailor, and shopped with Jesse across multiple boroughs. The pieces they chose captured the essence of Hip, Jazzy-Grunge without breaking Jesse’s budget.

Jesse and I then contracted a Fashion Photographer, with whom I shared our Creative Brief. We scheduled a photography shoot that involved both the Stylist and myself as Producer, addressing various target consumers of Jesse’s brand with each change of clothing, lighting, and location. The product was an amazingly diverse range of photos that Jesse could use to specifically target his four groups of consumers: target event planners, academia, club owners, and talent agents.

Jesse is currently working with a Graphic Designer to design a CD cover, promotional posters, and a website. There are plans to promote his new CD on MySpace and perhaps, in the future, to produce a music video as a buzz marketing piece for distribution on his website and on YouTube.