"Arcadia Student Balances Classes and Music Career"

Amanda Penecale '09M
by Simone Oliver '09

You may not have noticed Amanda Penecale '09M brushing by you in Taylor Hall where she spends three days a week working for Assistant Professor of Education Dr. Julia Plummer. In passing, she appears to be just like any other Arcadia student, but there is something special about her that you wouldn't discover until you got to know her. Penecale is in her second year of the graduate Art Education K-12 program.
"I started here after Christmas last spring semester, so I'll be student teaching this coming spring. This is my third semester," says Penecale. "With my degree I hope to be teaching high school, but I am willing to do whatever the job market brings my way. I'd like to teach photography if possible, but I think I'd be happy with any teaching job."

Regardless of what she ends up doing after graduation, one thing will always remain a constant in her life: music. At a young age, she held a special affinity for the arts, teaching herself to play the piano at just 5 years of age. Once she started high school, she began to teach herself the guitar, and the rest is history.
"I played with some people in high school," says Penecale. "We had a folk band and we played in Starbucks and coffee beaneries and that kind of thing. It was just for fun."
After completing her B.F.A. in Illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design, she moved to Nantucket where she student taught and worked as a photographer's assistant.
"I didn't have a T.V. or a car, so I had a lot of time to work on my music. I wrote so much during that time."
During this time, Penecale would get permits that allowed her to play her music on the streets of Nantucket. She says she would often go out on nights when she had nothing else to do and play for fun. "It's called busking," she explains. "That's what I did in Nantucket. I didn't make too much money, but I made some good friends through it."
After spending the summer in Nantucket, Penecale spent a short a period of time teaching art to children in Maine, but returned to Pennsylvania, around Christmastime to be closer to her family.
"While I was away I had started applying to grad schools back home," she says. "It seemed like education was the direction I wanted to take, so I applied to Arcadia."
 
Once she moved back to Pennsylvania, she found a recording studio through MySpace and contacted some of the artists who recorded there. After doing some research, she decided on Cambridge Sound Studios in Newtown, Pa.
 
"I've been writing a lot, and getting bigger shows," says Penecale about her rising success. "I just had my CD release party, which had a huge turnout and sold out the room. I'm opening for Justin Townes Earle, a really good songwriter who is on a national tour." She got the gig opening for Earle after a booking agent from JC Dobbs on South Street heard her music on her record producer's MySpace.
"He really liked my sound so he booked me. I also just got booked yesterday for a place in Trenton."
With work study, classes, and a budding music career all on her plate, Penecale doesn't have very much free time, but she says she likes it that way. "It's always difficult but I'm one of those people who would rather have a 100 things to do and get them all done than to have one thing to do and the entire day to do it," says Penecale. Preview her music at www.myspace.com/amandapenecale and www.amandapenecale.com. Her EP Middle Ground is available on www.cdbaby.com.


http://gargoyle.arcadia.edu/bulletin/08/0930.htm