the pickaphone

Fran has developed a workshop/residency that integrates musical instrument building, acoustics, improvisation, and recycling into an inspiring and ear-opening experience. 

He has taught the building and playing of his powerful and accessible musical instruments to all ages at schools, museums, community centers, county fairs, the International Youth Conference on Human Rights in Vienna and the 50th annual International Aspen Design Conference.  

These workshops are distinguished by their focus upon powerful wind instruments that are easy to make and play that he has designed to be built out of common salvaged materials.

Fran has designed and led multi-session teacher trainings based on his popular workshops to hundreds of  teachers of all grades,
including the California Association of Music Teachers. 

These trainings have been sponsored by many organizations including: 
+    the Exploratorium's Teacher Institute (San Francisco)
+    Palace  of the Legion of Honor (San Francisco)
+    Lawrence Hall of Science
+    the Discovery Museums (Sausalito and San Jose)
+    San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
+    Oakland Museum of California
+    Resource Area For Teachers (San Jose)
+    Oakland Unified School District
+    Bread and Puppet Theater
+    Berkeley Arts Festival
+    the Randall Museum (San Francisco)
+    the Jewish Music Festival (Berkeley)

His instruments are featured in
the Smithsonian book "Musical Craftsmen from the Heartland",
the Exploratorium Snackbook,
the Journal of Experimental Musical Instruments,
and the Resource Area for Teachers website.

Fran has performed with these instruments, often accompanied by his audiences, at
+    Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA)
+    Richmond Arts Center (Richmond, CA)
+    the Discovery Museums (Sausalito and San Jose)
+    the Exploratorium (San Francisco)
+    Oakland Musem of California
+    Tenderloin Street Fair (San Francisco)
+    Palace of the Legion of Honor
+    and hundreds of other locations

Fran co-founded and directed a non-profit community center in Berkeley called the Tinkers Workshop where he developed and ran a bi-weekly community bicycle clinic,
an annual Do-It-Yourself skillshare conference, and a mobile sound-stage training program for young artists and community organizers.   All of these programs were available to the public free of charge.