Americans for the Arts is the nation's leading nonprofit organization for advancing the arts and arts education. Once a year they put together National Arts Advocacy Day, which brings together thousands of people to advocate for arts and education in front of Congress.
This year's National Arts Advocacy Day took place on April 8-9 and featured a lecture from Yo-Yo Ma on Arts & Public Policy. The following morning Ma was joined by a panel of arts advocates that included ArtistWorks instructors Jason Vieaux (classical guitar lessons) and Nathan Cole (violin lessons); as well as Guns N' Roses drummer Matt Sorum, former dancer Damian Woetzel, and author Lisa Phillips. The event streamed live on Google + this morning and was moderated by Bob Lynch, President and CEO of Americans for the Arts.
Barcelona TV has featured ArtistWorks in a new segment that talks about the rise of online music lessons. As it turns out, there are not too many bluegrass musicians in Spain. But times they are a changing, and for bluegrass guitarists like Juan Pablo, they can connect to bluegrass musicians around the world using online music lessons. This opens the possibility to not only have contact with artists who specialize in their favorite music, but in the case of ArtistWorks, they have access best musicians in the world as their personal teachers. Using ArtistWorks, Juan Pablo can learn bluegrass guitar online with Bryan Sutton - who's regarded as the best flatpick guitarist since the late Doc Watson pioneered the style.
For the first time ever in the history of ArtistWorks, each of our 6 guitar teachers have collaborated via Video Exchange™ for a blues guitar jam. That's 6 different players in 3 different countries across 2 continents all jamming on the same blues backing track: Martin Taylor (fingerstyle guitar lessons), Andreas Oberg (jazz guitar lessons), Andy Hall (Dobro lessons), Jason Vieaux (classical guitar lessons), Bryan Sutton (acoustic guitar lessons), and Paul Gilbert (rock guitar lessons).
Bouree, from the first Lute Suite by J.S. Bach is an oft-prescribed piece for classical guitar students early in their development. Jason Vieaux introduces the piece and begins teaching it in the classical guitar lesson above.