RAY FUNK

The current school year has been a busy one for one of Texas’s leading pan educators, CJ Menge, and the Inside Out Steelband he leads.

Menge has been playing pan professionally since 1992, and founded the Inside Out Steelpan programme in Austin, Texas, in 1996. It’s has been going strong ever since in public schools in the Austin area.

This year, he’s been a teaching artist for the entire school year at high schools in both Austin and San Antonio, as well as guest artist in residence at two other high schools in Central Texas.

He also spent two weeks in the Bahamas in December helping to start two new pan programmes in the Abaco Islands.

In February, Menge was the resident host for the US Pan Educators conference in Austin.

Since then, he has done workshops and been a guest artist and clinician for concerts and festivals in Alaska, Texas, Oklahoma, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

The Inside Out fall concert featured Trinidad’s Liam Teague and his talented son Jaden Teague-Nuñez. Inside Out recently presented its 27th annual steelband festival, with guest artist Daron Roberts.

[caption id="attachment_1089821" align="aligncenter" width="480"] CJ Menge, left, instructs a student during a recent two-week workshop for students at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired. -[/caption]

Menge is also working on commissions for new music for steelband, solo pan and percussion orchestra.

But perhaps most rewarding, Menge recently completed a two-week workshop for students at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired (TSBVI).

His relationship with the school goes back to single-afternoon presentations in the early 2000s when he was teaching at a community music school in Austin.

In 2016, he contacted TSBVI to propose a yearly residency, and has had a teaching relationship with the school since then, initially directing the pan residency for five consecutive years. Each year, the residency culminates in a final public performance with the Inside Out Community Steelband in concert at the school, featuring the students who participated in the workshop.

Because of the pandemic, the residency was cancelled for some time and has only begun again this year. Each year, from four to a dozen teenage students participate.

Menge says he proceeds carefully with his instruction.

“The first step each year is to know as much as I can about the level of sight impairment for each individual student...so that I can communicate slightly differently with the students that have partial vision (or) absolutely no vision.”

He brings tenor pans for each student to play during the residency, so they all learn on the same pattern and layout. Braille lettering stickers are put next to the notes so those who read braille are able to use that skill.

“I’ll get the students oriented behind the pan without sticks in their hands, and then I will describe how the notes are crafted and how the metal is stretched inside the surface of each specific pitch. And then I’ll have them run their finger pa