Songwriter celebrates 25 years of making music with kids
For a quarter century, Paul Reisler and his collaborators at Kid Pan Alley have inspired nearly 3,000 songs, written and performed by about 80,000 school kids across the United States.
Reisler — songwriter, performer, teacher and inspirer — will celebrate the milestone with a concert at the Little Washington Theatre on Saturday, May 3 at 7:30 p.m. Musicians will include John D’earth, Lea Morris, Tom Teasley, Peter Princiotto, Marshall Keys and Reisler’s wife, Cheryl. They are reassembling in town like old family members, long accustomed to reading one another’s musical cues, recreating a flow of sound largely from shared memory.
Reisler’s approach to songwriting workshops with children came to him unplanned. He had both performed and recorded albums for young listeners, but was new to teaching children in 1999, when the Rappahannock County Elementary School proposed a three-week musical residency.
Paul and Cheryl Reisler at their home in Washington, Va. (Photo/Ireland Hayes)
Reisler’s musical acclaim dates to 1975, when he co-founded Trapezoid, an ensemble The Washington Post later hailed as “the finest folk group in America.” Said Reisler: “Trapezoid was a great outlet for presenting my songs and instrumentals.Through Trapezoid I experienced the power of song to build community.”
That background helped when Reisler began his residency at the elementary school. Having often performed tunes of his own composition, Reisler made a key decision on his approach: “I didn’t want to teach kids a song that had already been written.” Meanwhile, he said, “I realized that kids have what you need most for songwriting — that is imagination. It just needs some direction.”
That understanding was the key to songwriting workshops Reisler went on to lead as far afield as Colorado and Hawaii. “Everyone has a song in them,” he said, underscoring that none of the many songwriting workshops has put that premise in doubt. The strongest lessons from the workshops involve both creativity and collaboration.
Paul Reisler tunes his guitar before singing “I don’t want to talk about love,” a song written with Wakefield Country Day School students. (Photo/Ireland Hayes)
‘I don’t want to say anything about love’
Often a speech fragment can launch a song. Asking one group of school kids what subjects they might want to turn into songs, a girl suggested love, to which a boy on the other side of the room responded, “I don’t want to say anything about love.” Reisler immediately realized the boy’s declaration might serve as an opening lyric. The resulting song — performed at home on Hunters Road in Tiger Valley last week by Reisler and his wife Cheryl, a former school principal with a background in music education — tenderly explores the ambivalence of wanting love while running away from it.
During the three weeks at Rappahannock County Elementary School, Reisler led his students in composing 50 songs. The concluding concert was received with such enthusiasm that it gave birth to a recording, “Tidal Wave of Song.” Sadly, the joy accompanying the release was shattered a few days later by the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
Reisler moved to Rappahannock in 1985 with his then-wife Julie Portman, who became the founder and artistic director of the Ki Theatre in Little Washington. The playwright-director and the songwriter-performer pursued distinct creative paths but often collaborated. In the 1980s, Reisler composed music to accompany Portman’s plays. They worked together on a program called Magic Words, which involved stories for children. Both were drawn to encouraging others to find their own modes of creativity. When Reisler expanded into songwriting workshops, Portman launched a writing program called Life Stories.
Longtime resident Joyce Abell, a participant in Life Stories, suggested that the life stories be shared with the community from the stage. Portman agreed and chose the name No Ordinary Person from Studs Terkel’s Pulitzer prize-winning writings. The program continues today, a cornerstone production of the Rappahannock Association for Arts and Community.
In 2023, Reisler worked with others to organize productions in Richmond and Little Washington of Portman’s play “The Man Who Eats Books,” which she completed a week before she died of cancer in 2008.
It was 20 years ago that Kid Pan Alley was born at Rappahannock County Elementary School in Washington, Va., where students still perform today. (Photo/Molly Peterson)
‘One of the great treasures’
Retired Marine Col. John R. Bourgeois, director of “The President’s Own” United States Marine Band from 1979 to 1996, said of Reisler, a close neighbor: “He does it all with a flair. He puts children’s voices to music and prose. He’s one of the great treasures of Rappahannock County.”
Bourgeois often relies on Reisler’s technological mastery. The songwriter functions as the sound engineer for Bourgeois’ July 4 concerts at Avon Hall in Little Washington. Bourgeois, who also composes music and often publishes new editions of classic band compositions, says broadly that Reisler “has been very helpful to me on technology.”
Reisler takes a photo while working as the sound engineer for retired Marine Col. John R. Bourgeois’ Fourth of July concert at Avon Hall in July of 2023. (Photo/Luke Christopher)
Paul and Cheryl Reisler married in 2021, having met 10 years earlier when Kid Pan Alley led a songwriting workshop at the Fairfax school where she served as principal. Cheryl Reisler, who is also a figurative sculptor working with cloth and found objects, joins her husband in staging the Kid Pan Alley workshops and in singing tunes that have emerged from his long career in music-making.
Paul Reisler is 75 years old, but neither the Kid Pan Alley concert, nor a future performance celebrating Trapezoid, is a retirement party. Songwriting workshops will continue as schedules permit. In September, the Reislers are slated to be in Messejana, Portugal, for a residence where “artists, makers, writers, and innovative minds can pursue their projects.”
A universal language
Considering music a universal language, the Reislers have used the Kid Pan Alley workshops to forge connections that participating students probably would never have imagined. One group composed songs to paintings they viewed in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. Another composed tunes about the Shenandoah National Park. And some students teamed up on songwriting exercises with largely non-verbal young people at a nearby school for disabled children.
A Kid Pan Alley program in nearby Front Royal linked the participating children with elderly citizens, including a 103-year-old World War II veteran, who told about surviving in the jungles of a South Pacific island. Reisler helped the students compose a song about this harrowing war story, performing it at a concert the veteran attended. Three days later, the aged soldier, having heard his tale set to music, died.
The episode confirmed another of Reisler’s core beliefs: “The most important thing about being a good songwriter is being a good listener.”
