Inside Malden Host and Producer, Ose Schwab from Neighborhood View

A rockstar panel discussing how to market, fund, and create new markets for the arts. These panelists are community-minded, passionate, and successful in their endeavors.

For more information about this panel discussion, visit insidemalden.com

A rockstar panel discussing how to market, fund, and create new markets for the arts. These panelists are community-minded, passionate, and successful in their endeavors.

Information about this panel discussion: insidemalden.com
Image: Jean Appolon Expressions Dance Haiti with Artistic Director, Jean Appolon. jeanappolonexpressions.org

A rockstar panel discussing how to market, fund, and create new markets for the arts. These panelists are community-minded, passionate, and successful in their endeavors.

For information about this panel discussion, visit insidemalden.com
Image: A

Driven by a desire to give back and to offer educational opportunities to young urban learners, Dr. Charles Grandson IV, Interim Superintendent of the Malden Public Schools, reflects on his journey with education. He says his success is a "testament to what is happening every day in the public school systems across the nation." In his case, though he had trouble and at one point could not read, his teachers did not dismiss him but did what they had to do to help him become what he is today.

Though Grandson never imagined he would be a superintendent or principal, he says he has always had a bit of a teacher within. This inclination was nurtured by important learning encounters that would shape his future. His mother, a single parent, arranged for Grandson to be schooled away from the crime close to home. In a school district closer to Georgetown, Grandson experienced a "different" kind of education than he would have had in his own neighborhood on the South East side of Washington D.C.

Throughout his schooling, Grandson cultivated a deep love of history and learning in general. First as a history teacher and now as an educational leader, he is an activist in the spirit of Benjamin Franklin and other founders of democracy. Education, according to Grandson, is "the great equalizer." It can empower and draw out the greatness of every student. His work is to him a "gift that keeps on giving" and a way to, in the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, first empower ..."informed and intelligent citizens, and, secondly, bring about the realization that we are all responsible for the trend of thought and the action of our times.” (Good Citizenship: the Purpose of Education)

Music played during this episode is from "Magic Jar", from The Butterfly Chronicles Album, Kevin Harris Project. www.kevinharrisproject.com

For more information about this and other episodes, visit www.insidemalden.com

Podcast of conversation with Peter Moore, Composer, Performer, and Producer.

When asked what a song about Malden would be, singer songwriter, producer, performer Peter Moore gave the perfect answer, "It depends on who asks for it."

Peter Moore is as versatile, creative, edgy, and adaptive as artists get... able to bend styles, experiment with sound, inject quirks, and apply variety to the need. He intrigues listeners whether singing on stage with Blue Man Group or performing with his current rock band Count Zero, producing a kickstarter-funded rock opera, Heterotopia, writing songs that were picked up by video games such as Rock Band 2 or Guitar Hero, or songs like Hire a Bird that rail against the destruction of the earth and reach the Top 500 Songs of All Time on Boston radio station WFNX. There is no doubt, Peter Moore could provide a number of songs for Malden in styles to suit our colorful demographic makeup and sensibilities.

His voracious creativity and addiction to keeping himself and the audience curious and intrigued is what keeps him out of any one category. Yes, he writes pop songs; yes, he sounds like Jim Morrison when he wants to; yes, he likes singing with a pen in his mouth because it gives his voice an interesting sound; yes, he was classically trained and composes in the classical style; yes, he can pull together a very cool dramatic rendering of a video like the My Mockingbird clip below, and yes, to many more examples of his own brand of creativity that pushes the edges of category and delightfully puzzles his fans and collaborators, leaving us all to echo the words of Heterotopia mastermind Lainey Schooltree, who says of Peter Moore,

I'm confounded by the fact that Peter Moore exists, let alone his proximal advantages....He's shepherded this album with incredible skill, care, and regard and is responsible for the successful actualization of this recording project, bringing it to a level I wasn't aware was possible.

Moore says of his work that he looks for "the things that need to be talked about," but he doesn't like "talking about things that have already been talked about." The message that comes across is always new, edgy, thought-provoking, with a twist that refreshes the familiar and confounds the "same old."

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Music excerpts courtesy of Peter Moore, https://soundcloud.com/peter-moore; http://www.petermooreworld.com

"My Mockingbird", Count Zero
"Hire a Bird", Think Tree
"Dream a Million Stars", Count Zero
"Sing Along", Featuring Peter Moore, Blue Man Group
"Sail Your Ship By", Count Zero
"Sister Sunshine", Peter Moore
"Shoko Ruff 0809", Peter Moore

For more information about Inside Malden, visit http://insidemalden.com