Maharishi University of Management has found a home in Fairfield, Iowa. Fairfield is a small town with an active arts community and an entrepreneurial business center surrounded by agricultural land. A few years ago, a hair and beauty salon closed its doors and The Beauty Shop re-opened those doors as a music and art venue, now serving coffee and tea. It’s a chill place to hang out, work, do home-work, learn something new, practice something old, or get to work on something you’ve always wanted to do. One of the projects that is growing up in this space is a music residency program. Fairfield has quite a talented group of musicians including the rising star, Eli Lieb who recently did a Payphone Maroon 5 cover.
Taylor Ross, who is spear heading the music residency program describes Fairfield and the program, “It ain’t no big city bursting at the seams with a rainbow of every possible human expression through music and the arts. It will not show you the full spectrum of every possible madness you might create. But, the prairie’s pretty darn nice, and inspiring if I do say so myself. It is quiet, deep down quiet, and healthy and humble. For these reasons, we’ve decided it would be a radical place to offer a retreat of sorts for young-ish musicians to come and work on new material without having to worry about paying rent or eating, or paying for recordings of new material.”
The goal of the music residency program is to enrich the Fairfield community with “monthly injections of traveling musicians who come here to settle into the little rhythms of small-town life and have some much-needed, and rare, time to make music that changes us in some way.” 
The plan:
- Support 1 to 2 solo musicians each month or support collaboration between two musicians for one month
- Provide a quiet, clean, living space with a piano
- Provide a food stipend and coupons for free meals at local restaurants
- Produce a live recording of an end-of-the-month concert
- Musicians will perform a concert at the beginning of the month of residency and at the end
- Musicians will offer classes
Visiting musician schedule:
- December 2011: Jeremy Averitt: Electronic musician, bass player and harmonizer extraordinaire for the band Princess Musics, Sound engineer, member of Long Spoon Collective
- January 2012: Shenandoah Davis and Paleo
- February 2012: Laura Goldhamer
- March 2012: Eleanor Murray
- April 2012: C.J. Boyd
- May 2012: Zoe Boekbinder
The Beauty Shop’s Music Residency is still looking for people in the Fairfield community to support the enrichment of musical life in Fairfield through financial contributions. Find out how you can support the program, here
If are interested in music, Fairfield, and Maharishi University of Management check out the school’s Creative Musical Arts Program and consider coming to a Visitor’s Weekend
All photos by Taylor Ross.
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Anna Bruen is a MUM alumnus who graduated with a degree in Sustainable Living. Anna is the resident blogger here at MUM. To learn more about Anna take a look at her introduction post. |
