“I’ve been looking for reasons to be grumpy, but I just can’t,” she said. “I love my job!”

Dakota loved her job before WYSO made its big move across the street last Tuesday from the Sontag-Fels building owned by Antioch College to the ground floor of the Kettering building, which was vacated over the winter when the university administrative staff moved across town to the Creative Memories building. But with a $1 million renovation for new studios and expanded office space and $126,000 in broadcasting equipment upgrades, the job of growing the 91.3 FM public radio station just got a whole lot easier. “This was really a momentous move,” Dakota said last week. “That the university recognized and valued what we do here at this community radio station — it makes me want to cry. I feel so lucky.”

WYSO has moved just three times since its first broadcast as an Antioch College radio station in 1958, when it was housed in the northeast corner of the student union. The station moved to the Fels building in 1995, and went from being a mostly Yellow Springs station to its current capacity serving a nine-county area and broadcasting not just national programs but local news, commentary and DJed programs. But operating from the basement of the aging and largely vacant Fels building was a challenge, WYSO Station Manager Neenah Ellis said. The building, vacated by Antioch University Midwest (then called Antioch McGregor) in 2007, has long had plumbing and HVAC issues, which caused secondary problems such as mold and temperature fluctuations. In addition, the old production and sound recording space was limited.

The remodeled space in the southwest corner of the Kettering building offers three times the production space, including a new master studio and one for backup, three production booths and a live performance space with ample room for an audience. The recent investment also includes a new transmitter to pump up the station’s signal from 37,000 watts to 50,000 watts, which while it won’t increase the broadcast area, will improve the quality of the signal, especially at the fringe of the coverage area. The station also got a new satellite dish for better reception of syndicated programs and other equipment to facilitate the production process. The rest of the ground floor allows for expanded office spaces for WYSO’s eight full-time and three part-time staff members and dozens of volunteers. Last week WYSO staff members Sarah Buckingham and Juliet Fromholt were helping to move boxes of CDs into the new music library and digitizing room, where the station will eventually open its archives to the public.

Overall, Ellis said in an interview last week, the move will accommodate growth for the station, especially in the area of local programming, which listeners around the Miami Valley have said they want more of in their local station.

“To me it’s not an either/or — I think we can do both [national and local programming] and do both very well,” Ellis said. “WYSO has an incredible tradition here since it started, of telling local stories,” and along with some grant funding, the station plans to use the new studio “to help us step up to the next level with more community programming and training.”

Currently WYSO has 12 locally produced shows, including news director Emily McCord’s “Politics Ohio,” “The Book Nook with Vick Mickunas,” music programs such as “Kaleidoscope” with Fromholt and “Midnight Ramble” with Tom Duffy, and commentary such as “Filmically Perfect” with Dakota, J. Todd Anderson and George Willeman. And the station is positioning itself to do more. Last year WYSO launched Community Voices to train people at the studio with the writing, editing, recording and announcing skills needed to produce a radio program. Over the winter WYSO received a $100,000 Localore project grant to partner with local media producers Steve Bognar and Julia Reichert to cover the post-recession stories of the people of Dayton. And this year the station is working with Antioch University to create a pilot for an online media production course for its students.

“The idea is, who doesn’t need some kind of media training these days? No matter what you’re doing, you need to understand this vocabulary and the potential of using these tools,” Ellis said. “We’re starting with radio because that’s what we know…but the long-range goal is to become a media training center.”

The reason for training more people in production is to get those who live in the community to tell the stories of that community. They are the ones who know it best, and listeners like hearing from them, Ellis believes.

“People like hearing the local voices, and they’re very, very unhappy about taking local stuff off the air,” Ellis said. “So now we have the staff and the space, and we’re trying to grow the resources” to achieve that goal.

While the university, which owns WYSO, covered the cost of the move and some of the equipment upgrades (which the station did not have to ask its listeners to support), the station will need to cover an increase in annual operating costs in the new space, which are expected to reach between $70,000 and $100,000, part of which will be borne by the university that still uses the upper floors for records storage. The bulk of the cost will need to come from station revenues, Ellis said. Those revenues are currently looking positive, with membership on the rise and audience numbers growing modestly in all age groups.

“We’re not making a huge budgetary leap, but we’re assuming more of the basic operating costs of the building,” she said.

With Congress threatening to cut the public broadcasting funds that support WYSO, the station must be prepared to replace lost revenue, Ellis said. The station has raised $400,000 in local, state and federal grants since Ellis joined the station in 2009, and this summer WYSO hired development director Luke Dennis to help leverage more support. The station launched a fundraising feasibility study this spring and hopes to know more by June about how much it could raise, given the station’s reach.

For now, the move has been a big shot in the arm toward growing capacity. At noon on Tuesday last week, the station organized a parade across the street with Dakota, who was on the air when the station’s signal switched from the old building to the new one.

“For us it was a momentous occasion and a big milestone — it’s something we’re all going to remember,” Ellis said. “To me it’s like a page turned in the history of WYSO. We’ve got the infrastructure now, and from here it’s about making progress and training people.”

Arment has been part of the peace movement since his early 20s.

“When you grew up in the ‘70s, the early ‘70s in particular, there was lots of pull on which way people should go, fight for peace or tuck into the regular world…a lot of us at that time decided to choose between violence and nonviolence,” he said in a recent interview.

Arment co-founded the Dayton International Peace Museum in 2004, nine years after the Dayton Accords ended the war in Bosnia. He’s also the director of International Cities of Peace, a group he helped create in 2009 to bring together municipalities that have a unique place in the history of peacemaking.

Cities of Peace has developed the idea that “safety, prosperity, [and] quality of life” are the “consensus values of peace.”

“People are so polarized and argumentative about everything, but that has really resonated with everyone we’ve talked to,” said Arment.

Yet, while people seem to agree on what characterizes peace, they disagree on how to bring it about.

“At the museum…everyone who walked in that door had a different take on peace and many thought their way to peace was the only way to peace,” he said.

This inspired Arment to ask, “why is the nature of peace so individual?” He concluded that “it has to do with our character traits and what we value.” In other words, it “depends on what your personality is, what way you choose to work for peace.”

This idea led to a new exhibit, “16 ways to work for peace.” The exhibit was eventually expanded several times, until the original number of “ways” had almost doubled. Indeed, “there seem to be 30 specific ways to work for peace,” said Arment.

Thus, “this book focuses on 30 methods and characteristics, 30 different individuals…each [was] able to use their time in history and their characteristics to make a difference, and each of us has that opportunity,” said Arment.

Nelson Mandela is one leader profiled in The Elements of Peace.

“He started fighting for peace, he was put in jail for armed attacks, but came to know nonviolence and that it was the way to get rid of apartheid. But he didn’t stop there. He knew that after [a] treaty, you have to prevent bloodshed. Mandela had the virtue of forgiveness, which I believe allowed him to see the path forward. He knew that his enemies needed to be freed as well as his compatriots,” said Arment.

Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who was posted to Hungary during World War II, is also profiled. “He saw Jews being shipped to concentration camps,” said Arment. “His characteristic of empathy drove him toward a heroic effort of giving thousands of passports to allow Jews to leave before they were captured.”

Advocates like Arment face certain obstacles when trying to convince people of their power to be peacemakers.

“There are lots of preconceived notions about peace,” he said. He sees his book as “brushing away the fear, [giving people] the courage to find our own course of action.”

While it might seem that violence dominates human society, Arment argues that the opposite is true. In the book he quotes Gandhi, who said, “acts of love and service are much more common in this world than conflicts and quarrels.”

“99.9 percent of our activities are peace-related, but violence has corrupted our lives,” said Arment.

This negativity is encouraged by “people that love power,” said Arment. “It’s a way of domination…[arising from] the negative side of religion, politics, wealth accumulation. All of those depend on us feeling a bit of fear and fear is really the problem.”

While problems such as the threat to the environment from the burning of fossil fuels can seem overwhelming, there is reason for hope, he maintains.

“Just in this town we have a huge environmental movement,” he said. He noted YSI’s development of technology that measures changes in climate, helping to expand our understanding of global warming.

Arment tries to steer readers clear of another potential stumbling block: perfectionism. In the book’s conclusion, he writes: “to always be good and right in every situation, every moment of our lives is neither possible nor a requirement for peacemaking. We realize there is no such thing as a perfect person, so most of us endeavor to become the best we can be. That is what we call individual human progress…our quest as peacemakers is to evolve our innate and acquired abilities to make positive changes in an imperfect world.”

Meanwhile, “you have to have a bit of peace in your life, and if you approach peace pushing through chaos you’ll create chaos.” Inner peace comes about through personal transformation, and arises from the virtue of “unity.” Neuroscanning experiments show that Buddhist monks and Catholic nuns have the same electrical brain response during meditation, said Arment. This “not only shows that we should be tolerative of other religions but that we can all find a sense of unity by personal meditation practices, whether that’s riding a bike, walking in the woods or praying in a church.”

He’s pleased with the reception of the book, which he said is enjoying “pretty good sales.” He added that a number of college conflict resolution departments have expressed interest in it. High schools, peace organizations and home schoolers are also among his intended audience.

Arment is already at work on his next book, The Economy of Peace, at the urging of his publisher. In it he plans to address the question, “What will be the character of our economy in a post-capitalist and post-socialist world?”

“Within this century,” said Arment, world economies will experience “remarkable change…and nonviolence is already a huge part of that change.”

The Elements of Peace is available from the publisher, McFarland & Company, as well as the major Internet booksellers. It can also be ordered locally from bookstores in Yellow Springs.

“It was a really interesting book to write,” he said. “It’s solved a lot of questions for me,” such as, “‘Why do people work in different ways for peace?’” and “‘What is it about my character that drives me to work for peace in my way?’”

As for his own guiding virtue, Arment said, “I think I’m an extreme optimist. I choose not to see the world as bad.”

If not everyone can muster this attitude, that still leaves 29 other virtues for potential peacemakers to discover in themselves.

The famous tune from the 1964 musical film Mary Poppins is one that students at the child-centered, independent school say they are excited to perform as part of this year’s spring play this weekend.

The Antioch School presents Mary Poppins at 7 p.m. Friday and 12:30 p.m. Saturday at the Clifton Opera House. Admission is free, but donations will be accepted to offset production costs and fund scholarships at the school.

Antioch School students have learned more than a new vocabulary word during this year’s theater production. In line with the 90-year-old alternative school’s educational philosophy of self-directed learning, each year older group students (grades 4–6) select a play, choose their parts, design their costumes, build sets and arrange special effects.

As a result, students learn teamwork, brainstorming, collaboration and goal-building, according to Older Group teacher Chris Powell. Even those with a small part play an equal role in the production.

“They learn more about teamwork than sports because it’s not a competition,” Powell said.

This cooperation was evident when two sixth graders both wanted to play the female lead, Mary Poppins. Ket White wanted the role to give her a leg up on future theater ambitions, while Jorie Sieck hoped to sing the character’s many fun songs, including “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” They decided to split the role between the two performances. The girls aren’t competitive with one another, they said, and even help each other memorize lines.

At the Antioch School, students can play a lead if they want, an opportunity not typically afforded at other schools, said Ella Comerford, who plays Jane Banks. White, for one, is taking advantage.

“I thought that as a sixth grader this was my last chance to be a lead,” White said. “Being a lead you have more experience for bigger parts later on.”

On the other hand, Kayden Boutis, who plays the male lead Bert, didn’t necessarily want to have a major role, but he decided to step up as a sixth grader.

“The main reason I chose a lead is because sixth graders are always the leads,” he said. “I felt it was my responsibility to be a lead.”

Once a play is chosen and roles are divided and as the production evolves, students learn memorization and build their confidence, Powell said.

Ket, who once thought memorizing her lines would be impossible, now has them down with the help of daily practice. But she remains apprehensive about performing in front of a packed house.

“I’m afraid I’ll sing the wrong note — I’m nervous when everyone’s there,” she said.

“You shouldn’t be scared,” chimed in Cecilia Jones, who plays Mrs. Banks. “The audience doesn’t know what to expect.”

Later, when designing the sets and effects that will convince audiences they are in London in 1910, the setting of the play, the students must “think outside of the box” Powell said.

“It’s about building something magical,” she said.

And the world of Mary Poppins is especially magical. Hat stands are pulled from carpetbags, children get swept up chimneys and people and tables float about. This has posed a special challenge to students who have to figure out how to create the impossible, Powell said. As for the secrets behind the illusions, Powell said she’s not telling. Audiences have to see for themselves.

Acting as if they were someone else also presents a learning opporunity for students, who must figure out what makes their character tick.

Cecilia, as the “Sister Suffragette” Mrs. Banks, appreciates that her character is a powerful woman who silences her husband, she said.

Jorie, as a Mary Poppins, said she enjoys being dramatic and looks forward to singing in the vein of Julie Andrews, who played Mary Poppins in the 1964 film. She said her character is “never cross.”

But Kaden, whose character Bert tries to woo Mary Poppins, thinks Mary Poppins is mean — “a jerk.” Nevertheless his character sings of having a “jolly holiday” with her, and Boutis is excited to belt it out.

Grant Crawford, who plays Mr. Banks, weighed in on acting.

“I like to act because being me gets boring,” he said. “It’s fun to be someone else.”

Grant chose the role because Mr. Banks acts “grouchy” and “controlling,” two characteristics that Grant said he has in abundance.

On the other hand, Ella chose her role because it’s the character most unlike her.

“I picked Jane because it’s so much not like me,” Ella said. “Everything’s so ‘lovely.’ She’s ‘girly-girl,’ but I’m not.”

While Powell helps with staging and gives the students tweaks in their acting, the show is ultimately theirs, she said. This ownership always translates into a fantastic final product, she said.

“They see it blossom into a real theater production,” Powell said.

Mary Poppins is co-directed by Sally Dennis, with music provided by Ben Hemendinger.

The play is free of charge and starts and at 7 p.m. Friday and 12:30 p.m. Saturday at the Clifton Opera House. Donations will be accepted to offset production costs and fund scholarships at the school.

In line with the 90-year-old alternative school’s educational philosophy of self-directed learning, each year older group students (grades 4–6) select a play, choose their parts, design their costumes, build sets and arrange special effects. The magical world of Mary Poppins has posed a special challenge to students who have to figure out how to create the impossible. As for the secrets behind the illusions, audiences have to see for themselves.

See this week’s issue of the News for the full story.

Walls and tables overflowed with paintings, drawings, digital art, photography, fiber art and ceramics. and face-painters did a brisk business creating art on skin. Students could also make art projects to take home. Several Yellow Springs High School students presented the school’s first poetry slam.

Following the event, the Yellow Springs Arts Council created a new award  for an “Accomplished Body of Work” by a Yellow Springs High School senior. According to YSAC member Deb Housh, the award went to Lela Dewey for her series of pastels, “Emote: An Exploration of Color and Anatomy.” Arts Council members were impressed by Dewey’s “compositional maturity and controlled use of pastels,” according to Housh, who said the body of work award will become an annual honor.

But two decades later, things have changed. Many writers have taken publishing into their own hands, and are either on their own or with small independent presses publishing their books for electronic reading devices, such as Kindle. While initially hesitant to enter the world of electronic reading and publishing, Myers surprised herself by taking to the process with pleasure. Now, she’s published a new e-book, No Game for a Dame, a mystery novel set in Depression-era Dayton. The book is available at Amazon.com. (readers can also order a print-on-demand hard copy), and recently, the book has climbed to the list of Top 10 Historical Mysteries on the Amazon.com site.

“This seems to me sort of Occupy Publishing,” Myers said of the trend toward writers bypassing the traditional process in favor of electronic publishing. “It’s more a people’s movement. There’s a closer connection between reader and writer.”

For instance, many of Myers’ readers find her book online at GoodReads.com, where in readers’ forums they can contact the writer to ask questions or comment on the book. GoodReads has 5 million members, divided into groups of specialized reading taste, such as readers who prefer mysteries with female protagonists. That’s the category that Myers’ new book falls into, as she has created the Dayton private investigator Maggie Sullivan, a gutsy “broad” who keeps a .38 under her seat and a bottle of gin in her desk, making her way in the tough, man’s world of Depression-era Dayton.

A strong woman who’s not above using her “great-looking gams” to her advantage, Maggie was modeled on two strong women who influenced Myers’ own life. Both her mother and mother’s best friend from college became teachers in an era when most women didn’t work, living in rooming houses and riding mules to the one-room school houses where they taught in Missouri. Growing up, Myers heard many stories of her mother’s experiences as a single working woman during the Depression, and some of these stories found their way into the book.

As well as setting her story in the Depression, Myers plans to stay with Maggie Sullivan stories through the World War II years, partly because she wants an opportunity to look more closely at how people lived during that time. Women, especially, took on new opportunities they had because men were in the service, and everyone was engaged with the war effort in a way that seems alien to us now.

Myers chose Dayton for the story’s backdrop since she’d worked there herself as a young journalist for the now-defunct Dayton Journal Herald, and she was intrigued by Dayton’s rich history, especially up through World War II.

While Myers had thought years ago that it was possible for her to give up writing, she’s found recently that she’s much happier working away on another novel.

“Writing is the essence of who I am,” she said. “I see plots and stories on a day to day basis that seem interesting. It’s easier to set them down than to have them trundling around and elbowing me.”

Myers knew in the third grade that she wanted to write for a living, and pursued journalism at the University of Missouri after spending the later part of her childhood in Wyoming. She then worked for a paper in Michigan. After she met her husband, Henry, who was in the Air Force, the two moved to the Dayton area, and Ruth got a job writing for the Journal Herald. She discovered Yellow Springs when sent on an assignment to write about the Fels Institute, and returned to tell Henry that they should move here. The couple moved to the village in 1971, and lived here in 1992, raising their daughter, Jessica, in the village. Since then they have lived in the home they bought southeast of the village on Clark Run Road.

In the 1970s and 80s, Myers wrote eight published novels, including the suspenseful Journey to Cuzcan, the romantic fiction Costly Pleasures and Captain’s Pleasure and ending with A Touch of Magic, using in that book knowledge she gained as a professional musician. While Myers was constantly doing the creative work she loved, she was also pressured by the publishing houses to produce what sold best, and so veered into romantic fiction, where she felt less at home. So leaving the world of fiction-writing when the publishing business declined was less difficult than it might have otherwise been.

During her most productive years, Myers credits the Yellow Springs Writing Group’s weekly meetings with sustaining her.

“I don’t know if I would have evolved as a writer without their encouragement,” she said. “It helps a lot having a support structure like that.”

Myers tried her hand at other kinds of writing after she gave up novels, but missed telling stories. About five years ago, when a friend loaned her a Kindle, and Myers reluctantly tried it, she surprised herself by getting hooked.

The Kindle is more convenient than a hard copy book in many ways, such as being lightweight and easy to stick in a purse. Myers was also delighted at the new authors she was able to find and read for little cost, discovering the writers on GoodReads or Amazon, then paying only $.99 or $1.99 to download the books into her Kindle

“For any high volume reader, it’s a way to discover these new authors,” she said. “Some of them are spectacular.”

Several years ago, the idea of returning to novel-writing in this new format began percolating in Myers. She wrote a draft of her book and had it accepted by Tuesday House, an independent publishing house with virtual offices. While her publisher offered editorial review and help with marketing and promotion, Myers has also played a role in her book’s publication by making design decisions. She chose local graphic designer Alan Ramey to create a cover that suits the noir style of the book.

Having had a good experience with No Game for a Dame, Myers is already at work on her second Maggie Sullivan book, sometimes sitting for hours in the Dayton Public Library to get the period details just right. She’s thrilled to be doing her creative work again, and doing it exactly as she wants to, without being confined by the bottom line needs of a publisher.

“Coming back to writing at this point in my life is not about making a living,” she said. “It’s about writing what I want to write. It’s about having freedom.”

Unknowingly, Howell-Koehler froze in time a moment in village history during a period of change, uniquely capturing the people and places of Yellow Springs at the end of a period of social and political upheaval.

Her exhibit of 50 photos of Yellow Springers in their own environments will be on display this month at the Yellow Springs Arts Council’s new gallery, 111 Corry Street. The exhibit opening, Friday, April 20 from 6 to 9 p.m., will celebrate the Yellow Springs of that era with ’70s music and trivia, period hors d’ oeuvres like deviled eggs, pigs in a blanket and stuffed celery, and an open mic to share local stories from the time.

“It was a very different place [then],” said Howell-­Koehler, who has lived in the village since 1965 and now has homes in both Yellow Springs and Cincinnati, in an interview this week. “The college had a lot to do with that. A lot of downtown businesses were changing … I look back and that environment has changed a great deal.”

National trends like the growing womens and environmental movements and anti-war activism impacted the village in the 1970s, according to Arts Council gallery coordinator Nancy Mellon. Locally, Mellon mentioned the role of local organization Women, Inc., Vietnam protests, the Antioch College strikes, the Xenia tornado and the Yellow Springs hail storm as pivotal events of the period.

The exhibit will also be open for public viewing from 1 to 4 p.m. on April 21 and 28 and on May 5.

Howell-Koehler, a former Antioch College photography instructor with several books and articles in the New York Times to her name, previously showed the exhibit here in 1996, when she donated it to the permanent collection of the Yellow Springs Arts Council.

Because most people don’t like to have their photos taken, Howell-Koehler said she found that the self-photography method made her subjects more relaxed and confident and that they didn’t make unnatural facial expressions. What comes through most in the exhibit, to Howell-Koeher, is Yellow Springs’ diversity.

“It was an interesting diversity that you don’t always see in all small towns in an era when people were acknowledging diversity,” Howell-Koehler said. She said she chose her subjects to get a sampling of the population at the time, including shop keepers, writers, activists, actors, teachers and artists. Villagers pictured in the exhibit include Priscilla Moore, Joan Horn, Joan Ackerman, Tony Dallas, Kent Bristol, Flo Lorenz, Phyllis Schmidt and Gerry Fogarty.

A ceremony at 7 p.m. will mark the opening of the Arts Council’s new space, which was formerly occupied by Rolling Pen Book Café and, before that, Dolbeer’s Cleaners. The new space is the group’s third gallery in as many years.

Mellon said that a large back room, or “creation station,” in the Corry Street building affords the group new opportunities for workshops, artist space, film showings and dance performances. Another benefit is that the building is more handicapped accessible, especially since Greene County Career Center students recently installed an ADA-complaint wheelchair ramp they built between the front gallery area and the back work space. Mellon added that the Arts Council is eager to use Corry Street for outside events and street parties.

“This is an opportunity we haven’t had in a long time,” Mellon said of the space, adding that new revenue generated from rentals would further support the nonprofit, which receives no Village funding, and its member artists, who Mellon said often do much of their art for free and are currently struggling financially.

At the “groovy” exhibit opening villagers shouldn’t be surprised to see ’70s relics like lava lamps and shag rugs as the town remembers an often-neglected era, Mellon said. More attention is paid to Yellow Springs in the ’60s even though much activism often associated with that decade actually took place here in the ’70s, she said.

“It’s a time for community reminiscing,” Mellon said. “What did we look like? What do you remember? What do you cherish about that time?”

“Look, it’s a pegasus!” Connor McAnerney beamed over his meticulous arrangement of glass and marble.

“I’m making a banana,” Raven Campbell said, using yellow and orange shards of earthenware.

Others had created trees and suns and abstract designs with the intention of using their work to benefit the aesthetic of the school.

The residency came about by unlikely coincidence. Early this spring, Smith, a mosaic artist, made a pilgrimage to Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens, a series of mosaic installations by artist Isaiah Zagar whose decades-long project to beautify his South Street neighborhood has become a community engagement organization. She felt so moved by the experience that when she returned to Yellow Springs, her first thought was to call the school to see if there was interest in doing a similar community project with the students.

Around the same time, Mills Lawn art teacher Amy Minehart had been trying to figure out what to do with the large number of unused soup bowls her students had made for one of the election night Soup and Souls dinners. A parent had suggested during a PTO meeting the idea of breaking the bowls and using the pieces for an art project. Minehart knew the Mills Lawn sign could use some work, and she was wishing she could find someone with mosaic expertise when Smith called her up and proposed to take on that very role.

But Smith has never installed an outdoor mosaic, and so the school is getting help from local resident Todd Kreeger, who installs tile professionally, and Craig Mesure, who is helping to rebuild the foundation and secure the bedding for the sign. Both are connected to the school, Mesure through his children who attend Mills Lawn, and Kreeger, whose grandchildren are moving to the village and will likely attend the school as well. Smith’s daughter Rebecca also attended the local schools, which gives Smith a sense of purpose in the schools.

Smith herself learned during her trip to Philadelphia that much of her mosaic style had been inspired by Agar’s work, which she has been admiring for years for its rawness and movement.

“I’m not a super meticulous artist — there’s no OCD in me,” she said. “My work is casual and organic, which gives it an energy and effusiveness, which is good!”

Smith taught for many years at an area Hebrew school and has also taught in Montessori schools and public schools, and has been a substitute teacher in the Yellow Springs district as well. She has studied mosaic work for many years and does her own abstract work on recycled materials, tables and plaques, some of which is for sale at Glen Garden Gifts, Eco-mental and Village Greenery.

The students are excited to complete the mosaic on the front lawn of the school. Kreeger has already covered the sign with cement board, and next comes adhesive epoxy and then mosaic installation, followed by grouting and finishing. The mosaic project is expected to be complete this spring.

The Axiom Brass Quintet, top, and the Akropolis Wind Quintet are the finalists for the Chamber Music Yellow Springs annual competition for emerging artists. The two groups will perform Sunday, April 29, at 7:30 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church. (Photos submitted)

By Jeff Huntington

Chamber Music Yellow Springs will present the finals of the 27th annual CMYS Competition for Emerging Professional Ensembles on Sunday, April 29, 7:30 p.m., at the First Presbyterian Church. This competition is designed to give recognition and a career boost to two professional ensembles in their twenties who appear likely to be able to make a real difference to chamber music if given encouragement.

This year’s finalists are the Akropolis Quintet of Ann Arbor, Mich., an all-reed ensemble of oboe, clarinet, saxophone, bass clarinet and bassoon, and the Axiom Brass Quintet of Chicago, made up of two trumpets, French horn, trombone and tuba. Wind ensembles are generally held back by lack of repertoire, and both the Akropolis and the Axiom are working heroically to expand that repertoire by commissioning and championing new works. The Akropolis is Tim Gocklin, Kari Dion, Matt Landry, Andrew Koeppe and Ryan Reynolds. They have chosen to play an arrangement of a suite by Rameau and brand-new works by Chiel Meijering, David Heetderks, Ton ter Doest and Turkish composer Babur Tongur. They have already won first prizes in the Plowman and MTNA chamber music competitions.

The Axiom Brass, prizewinners in the Fischoff, Plowman, Passau and Jeju City competitions, is Dorival Puccini, Colin Oldenberg, Matthew Oliphant, Brett Johnson and Kevin Harrison. Their program runs from J. S. Bach through Victor Ewald to recent compositions by Witold Lutoslawski, David Sampson and Malcolm Arnold.

The finalists were chosen by competition chair Ben Miles and panelists Bill Spohn, Mary White, Ruth Bent, Jeff Huntington, Chris Chaffee, Sean Vore and Franklin Cox from videotaped entries. The judges for the finals will be Cristian Ganicenco, principal trombone of the Cincinnati Symphony and a chamber musician himself, Benjamin Freimuth, bass clarinetist of the Cincinnati Symphony and Kenneth Kohlenberg, music director of the Miami Valley Symphony, professor at Sinclair College and a trumpeter. Each finalist will perform a program of about 50 minutes, and then the judges will award the prizes of $4,000 and $3,000 on the spot.

WSU Professor Chuck Larkowski will give a free pre-concert lecture at 6:45 p.m., and there will be a reception and dinner following the concert, for which a reservation is required. Call 374-8800 or visit www.cmys.org to reserve seats at the concert or the dinner. Tickets at the door are $20 for adults and $6 for students.

The performances will be recorded by SoundSpace in Yellow Springs for broadcast over WDPR/WDPG-FM on Saturday, Aug. 18th at 10 a.m. Millard Mier will videotape the concert for the Community Access cable channel.