This is what greets me everyday I walk to work at The DiMenna Center.It’s displayed on a
giant billboard for Shriner’s Hospital, with faces of children looming over it, facing east
on W.37th Street between 9th and 10th Avenue,
and it’s a gentle reminder of why I’m doing what I’m doing. Everyday that I see
it, I answer to myself, “Yes!” I love this work passionately, and there’s
nothing I’d rather be doing than creating meaningful experiences for people through
an orchestra, a collective of musicians that exemplifies what a society can be:
a collaborative (though sometimes disagreeing) community that has the same
vision to perform great works of music as authentically as possible.
When I first started at Orchestra of St. Luke’s in June, I
felt a sense of urgency to record and communicate my experiences. But now I’m
beginning to wonder why. Why write this all down? Who am I really aiming to
share this with? Basically, I've found that some of the most helpful advice I’ve been given has come
from people who were transparent about the processes they went through to get
their programs off the ground, so this is a way to
share the process with others in the field who may be having similar
experiences.
So in the spirit of transparency, I invite you to pick
through the bits that interest you and comment if you feel it.
(Note: the blogs are organized into subjects and
chronologically, not according to the date of posting. Also, I wrote some of these blogs back in August, and some of them in retrospect in the last couple of weeks.)
Today marks 3 months since the Sistema Fellowship ended, and
2 months since I started my position as Director of Education at Orchestra of
St. Luke’s. Before the year takes over and we become absorbed in planning and
running programs, I want to take some time to honor the process. It is such a
sweet time, to indulge in planning, to ask the hard questions about why we do
what we do, and what our vision is that will guide our future decisions. I
think it may be interesting to look back one day on how we arrived at our
decisions.
As an aside, today, the ten 2012-2012 Sistema Fellows
organized a conference call to catch up, and I realized how valuable it is both
to share ideas with brilliant people with similar passions, and to stay
connected to and inspired by their great work.
So, here’s a play-by-play of the highlights of the last two months of Education
directorship at the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.
June
Introduction to the
orchestra
During my second week, I sit in on a rehearsal with Gil Shaham and the orchestra,
conducted by Roberto Abbado. They sound gorgeous, and I’m overwhelmingly happy
to be surrounded by an orchestra again. This is going to be a beautiful
relationship. (The first time I met Gil Shaham was when he played with the
Berlin Philharmonic when I moved to Berlin in 2003.)
Team-building meeting
with the education team.
I wanted to get to know the team I’d be working with, to
spend some time learning from them why they do what they do and what they believe has been
successful in their past experiences with OSL. I realized that
asking these questions may seem a bit contrived, but I genuinely believe that our learning about each others' motivations and perceptions of success will help us develop our future meetings to be as productive and open as
possible. We started with these questions:
What inspires your
work? Kids making instruments;creating
opportunities for students to participate in music; discovering the work/play
and aesthetic experience that kids are having; creating and becoming part of a
culture of music; continuing to see how music can give a child or another
person a broader world perspective through music.
How do you define
success of the education department? Students articulating musical concepts
that they weren’t able to articulate at the beginning of the year; students
performing together; students and teachers walking away from concerts with a
deeper understanding of and connection to music; a re-defined vision of the
department and program plans that fit within that vision.
What would be your
personal inquiry question for our work this year?
How can an orchestra connect with its community?
What are the best ways of inviting people to an orchestra’s
activities?
How do we connect with our audiences?
How do we define the OSL community?
What is our role in arts education?
What are the differences between arts education organizations,
performance organizations, and educational systems?
I'm looking forward to looking back on these questions at
the end of the year (May 2013) and seeing how we answer them.
Getting to know the
community—what is the need in this community?
As I learned from David France, you can never know a
community unless you get out and talk to people. So, we did. And what we
learned was so much more than we could have learned looking online in an
office. Mark (as in Mark Caruso, Assistant Director of Education at OSL) and I created a list of questions to ask people and a list of
people to ask. We went out talking to local business owners, local residents to
let them know about The DiMenna Center (DMC) and OSL, and to ask what community
organizations they know about in the neighborhood. We learned a great deal
about the neighborhood, and also realized that this was just the beginning of
our investigation. In short, two big themes kept coming up:
1. People felt that there aren't many activities that draw community members together, and that they'd like there to be more events that do this. The neighborhood is becoming rapidly affluent, but there are still many people living in shelters and transitional homes, and little is being done to make all residents feel a sense of neighborhood connection.
2. The schools reported that they felt there could be far more family involvement in the school activities.
Both of these things will help us to make a case for creating a youth orchestra with inter-generational opportunities.
We planned an El Sistema-awareness raising event for members of
the orchestra, staff, board, and friends, to let them know about ES as we
explore it as a model for our future programs. Then we rescheduled it when we
realized it was too soon to plan and most people were gone on holiday. Lesson:
don’t be too ambitious when you’re still learning about the day-to-day of an
organization.
In late July, we organized a meet and greet for our Amateur Musicians Project, a chamber music program for
passionate adult musicians. This gave people a chance to play a little, and talk about what their
musical background is and what they’re looking to do in the program. It was a helpful way for us to recruit new people to the program.
I was especially excited to send OSL musicians to former Sistema Fellow David Gracia’s Washington Heights Inwood Music camp. So much fun to see his program get off the ground!
The musicians loved teaching there, and we all can’t wait to do more of this. OSL violinist Eriko Sato, who coached at the camp, told me that one of the students waited around afterwards to speak with her. The student said, "I learned more from those 2 hours working with you then I've ever learned in my life!"
Our coordinator of Education Programs leaves, and thus
begins a search for a new staff person to support the Education and Artistic
programs. This is an extremely time-consuming process in a mid-sized
organization: drafting a job description, asking several people to weigh in,
re-drafting it, getting ready to post it, realizing you don’t have the password
for the sites you’d like to post to, asking for help locating those passwords,
finally posting the job description, and then figuring out a system to review
the dozens of applications coming in hourly.
Note to job applicants out there: make sure your materials
have been proofread, by SEVERAL people. The last thing a potential employer
wants to do is worry about correcting speling and grammar misstakes of an
administrator whose job it is to support the work of the department as
accurateley as possible. On that note, make sure you spell the name of the
organization you’re applying to correctly. I can’t tell you how many “Orchestra
of Saint Lukes” I saw. Finally, you may be desperate for a job, but spend at
least 5 minutes on the organizations’ website so it at least appears you know
something about the job you’re applying for.
Phew, I had to get that out.
Maintenance
Next, we launched our updated Arts Education pages on the
OSL website. New photos, more accurate descriptions and organization of the
programs. This is a good temporary site until we decide which new programs
we’ll launch next year.
Planning Free youth concerts
When I started at OSL, I knew that Tom Cabaniss had been
hired as a consultant to help plan the year’s Free Youth Concerts (known
internally as CFOs –the acronym for the Children’s Free Opera concerts that
long ago were the staple of the education programs- much to my total confusion for
a couple weeks when I kept thinking people were referring to the Chief
Financial Officer). I had worked with Tom when I was at Carnegie Hall, and knew
that his suggestions would be brilliant. There had already been a decision on
the table to highlight Stravinsky for the year of youth concerts, and Tom
suggested Soldier’s Tale for the Fall and Pulcinella for the Spring. I thought, “sounds
great!” knowing that we might go in a different direction in future years. I
mean, Soldier’s Tale for young students sounded pretty provocative and totally
cool. So we set off to get a minimal theatrical production off the ground,
hiring a director, looking into set designers and costume designers and a cast.
Lessons learned
Looking back on plans for July, I wish I had set up more
meetings with people in the community. And yet, I am aware that we still have
some time and that "getting to know a community" takes awhile.
Despite my best intentions to set up a task force, I
realized that some planning needed to take place before scheduling could happen
in the summer, so Mark and I put aside several hours and started exploring
answers to some of the bigger questions. I decided to first meet and get to
know the existing Arts Ed committee, and then decide who else we needed to ask
for help in designing and launching a Sistema-inspired program.
As the
summer went on, it became clearer that our new vision for the Education
department would look something like this:
The
Education & Community Programs of OSL are committed to giving people
opportunities to develop deep relationships with music and one another through
connecting with the extraordinary collection of musicians of OSL, participating in music, and utilizing the state-of-the-art spaces at The DiMenna
Center.
We were
fairly certain by August that our future programs would fall into 3 categories:
Access, Engagement, and Play (or something along those lines). To do this, we
were also fairly certain that we’d launch an intensive music program based on
El Sistema in our local neighborhood, and become a hub for existing El
Sistema-inspired programs to add value to their program by building
opportunities for children in their programs to connect with one another across
the city and work with members of OSL.
There was
one little issue, though, with how this jived with our existing programs. Most
of our school partnerships were arts integration/curriculum based. That is to
say, we developed a curriculum and our teaching artists created lesson plans,
met with classroom teachers, and implemented the curriculum in our school partner
classrooms in preparation for attending the Free Youth Concerts. A couple of
years ago, one of our local partner schools wanted violin instruction instead,
and we launched a program
in which a musician from the orchestra taught small classes of violin students one
day a week in school.
Now there is another partner school, which we’d decided to shift from the
curriculum-based model to a violin instruction model. This decision was made
before I had arrived, and the change had been negotiated amongst our funders,
the school, and the parents and teachers of that school. The school was so
excited for us to have a violin program, but as I was looking at the program, I
wondered, Does it really make sense to launch a violin instruction program at
this second school this year when we know it’s going to change dramatically next year?
Most likely, a future program would be after school, and we can’t assume that
many of the students participating in an in-school program will want to join an
intensive after-school program.
Furthermore, does it make sense to train teachers to teach violin in this
program when the nature of the program will change to become far more
intensive? Do we really have the time to invest in preparing a violin teacher
for this program so that the program is at the level we want it to be?
Well, Mark
and I went out to the school to meet with the music teacher and Principal. And
again, I was reminded of that lesson about listening to people. Although Mark
had told me this several times, I heard from the music teacher that she had
fundraised herself to get enough money from the parents to pay for the violin
program, and there were many students who were excited about joining it. On the
way back to the office, I wondered, “What would Abreu do?” And I knew the
answer immediately: Give the kids violins. You’ll figure out what to do with
them and the program later, but for now, only good can come of putting violins
in their hands.
We did make
a few changes to ensure that we’d have the time we needed to prepare for the
program sufficiently, so we agreed with the school to start in January as
opposed to in the Fall. And we’ve asked the school to join us in planning
sessions in January as we explore launching a Sistema-inspired program in our
neighborhood.
The start of September was exciting for a couple of reasons:
it was the beginning of the season, Katy had returned from her sabbatical so it
was great to be able to bounce ideas off her, and we had a new member join the
OSL team as Vice President of Artists and Programs: the legendary Charlie
Hamlen, founder of IMG Artists and Classical Action. The moment I met him and
he said, “We have a friend in common: Fred Hersch!” I was instantly struck by
his warm demeanor, and that admirable ability to connect with almost anyone and
make you feel like a fast friend. I knew instantly that I’d have much to learn
from this music industry giant (and he is, actually, a giant: he’s well over 6
feet), and that I was looking so forward to working with him everyday.
Professional
Development Sessions
With our Teaching
Artists, led by Tom Cabaniss
In our first PD of the year, I finally got to meet our
rock-star team of teaching artists. They’re truly an awesome bunch of seasoned
musician and dancer TAs, and as I observed and participated in the session led
by Tom Cabaniss about concepts around the Soldier’s Tale story, and
ornamentation, I wished I had seen these people in action back when I had
started at Carnegie Hall and we were launching the Teaching Artists
Collaborative. Hearing their approach to delving into new concepts and ideas
with Tom highlighted how ingrained “inquiry-based learning” was to them.
With the Longy School
of Music of Bard College, led by Lorrie Heagy
Early in September, Erik Holmgren (former Program Director
of Sistema Fellows, when I was in it, and now Director of Teaching and Learning
at the Longy School of Music of Bard College) called me and asked one of his
very earnest-sounding questions: how does offering a Professional Development
session in collaboration with Longy at The DiMenna Center support the mission
of your organization? When I answered, “The vision for our Education and
Community programs is to connect people with and through music, and by
utilizing the DMC. A PD across programs in New York City is exactly the kind of
activity we’re positioned to offer and it will also help support the teachers in our current programs." Erik replied, “Good, that’s
what I was hoping you’d say. Now, let’s plan a PD.”
It went enormously well. Lorrie shined in inviting us into
learning about concepts of student engagement from many different angles, and
we all got to learn alongside each other, teachers and nucleo directors from UpBeatNYC,
Corona Youth Music Project, Union City Music Project, and Washington Heights
Inwood program, not to mention a couple of musicians who would be teaching in
our violin program. We finished each of the intensive 2 days by traveling out
to Corona Youth Music Project to watch Lorrie in action with Alvaro Rodas’ students.
I very much hope this collaboration becomes a tradition and a staple in New
York City.
I did wonder, though, about our teaching artists. Were we
missing an opportunity to broaden the conversation about student engagement by
not having them there? It seems that we could connect our teaching artists with
the events that we’re offering other teachers in Sistema programs, and those
teachers’ opportunities to learn from the experience of our teaching artists.
Planning Soldier’s
Tale
There was a lot of back and forth about how to put on a
theatrical production of Soldier’s Tale with the orchestra. But it was sometime
in September when Katy or Valerie said to me, “Well, this is why we stopped
doing theatrical productions. We’re not exactly equipped to do a fully staged
production, so we’ve instead focused on dance and other productions. But if you
can do it on a small scale, go for it.” Something was beginning to dawn on me that
the theatrical focus might not be the right focus. By this point we were so far
along in the conceptualizing, though, that it didn’t make sense to re-think the
vision for the production.
The more we started having to deal with questions about
actors equity, set design, casting, and space for a costume designer to work,
the more I became aware that this was a far greater challenge for us as an organization
than perhaps I had initially realized. Still, we soldiered on. I was hell-bent
on making this production successful.
More
planning Soldier’s Tale, more wondering how on earth this production was going
to happen. And we were one staff member short. More looking through resumes and
interviewing. More strategic planning.
Two
highlights in October:
Sistema Fellows Sessions with OSL
Visit by
Sistema Fellows during their residency. I invited them to spend 2 days with
members of our staff and orchestra to explore questions about concert planning,
invigorating communities around music, and thinking through questions that
might be helpful for us to answer as we plan new programs. The Fellows were a tremendous resource to us in generating new ideas and questions that we'll most certainly integrate into our planning. Thanks, Fellows! We were
particularly grateful for Elaine Sandoval’s help in doing a community map for us.
Thanks, Elaine!
Different Direction for Soldier’s
Tale
It took one
of my TEDxNewYork salons to make me realize that the theatrical direction was
not working, nor was it going to work until I developed my own vision for the
production. I wrote a letter about this in December, focused more on the power of the
TEDxNewYork community, but I’m re-posting it here because this was a huge lesson
for me: whenever possible, develop your own vision and stick with it.
Dear members of TEDxNewYork,
We know that many of you miss the TEDxNewYork
salons, and we’re working hard to bring them back and make them better
than ever. In the meantime, I want to share a story with you about the
power of this community,
and why I’m personally looking so forward to starting up again in
January.
A couple of months ago, I arrived to facilitate the TEDxNewYork
salon, and I was having a really hard week. A project I’d been working
on wasn’t going well, and despite all my best efforts, I felt at a loss
as to how to move it forward. I didn’t really want to be at TEDxNewYork that evening, but I went, showed an
uplifting TED talk, and began to ask guided questions of the group to trigger a discussion.
Sometimes a person
will say something that irrevocably changes your perception, and sticks.
I called on a woman to share her thoughts about the talk, and she said
this:
“You’re either a
warrior or a victim. The difference is that a warrior is a person who
has a vision, and any obstacle is simply a hurdle on the way toward
realizing that vision. A victim is one who does not
have a vision, and any obstacle is a barrier that diverts you toward a
path you may have no control over.”
This completely
changed the way I thought about the project I was working on, and it was
also a lesson to me about life. I realized I didn’t have a vision for
the project: it was someone else’s vision that
I was trying to implement, and it wasn’t working at all. So I went
home, spent all Friday night imagining what I wanted the project to be,
and two months later, it turned into a successful series of orchestral
performances for 4,500 NYC school children.
It’s now December, and we haven’t had a TEDxNewYork salon since our sponsorship with Saatchi&Saatchi ended in November. I get emails from regular TEDxNewYork attendees asking when it will start up again,
and while my team and I are working hard to find a new
location, I personally feel stretched for time. I find myself asking,
“Is this unintended break a sign that you should maybe walk away? You
have so much on your plate right now—shouldn't you consider moving
on from TEDxNewYork?” And yet there’s always a nagging suspicion that being a part of the TEDxNewYork
community is really important, that exchanging ideas weekly with people
we don’t usually have a chance to meet is essential to feeding our mind
and spirit
amidst all of the other things we do in our busy NewYork City lives.
Cut to Monday
night. I find myself at an after-party of a film screening (how I ended
up at said party is its own bizarre story for another time). I know the
hosts, and I know my friends who scored the film.
It should be noted that I am in the music field, and have very few
connections to the film world. As I start to look around, I notice that
several people in the room look familiar. I instantly think they’re
friends of the host I’d met at other parties. Finally,
I’m standing face to face with one of them: a beautiful woman in a
large-brimmed hat, and we both say, “I know you, but from where?” We
quickly established that there was no way we could have met through the
host. And then it hit me: this was the woman at
TEDxNewYork who told the group about the
warrior and the victim. We both couldn’t believe it, and of course I
gave her a big hug and thanked her for her wisdom, which spurred me on
to discovering my own vision.
As we stood in the hallway, I began to see many other familiar faces of people who had come to TEDxNewYork. Each of them has shared a story or an idea that resonated with me and that I still think about today.
We all came to this party completely by chance, and through the ideas we’ve shared at TEDxNewYork,
we felt instantly more connected than we may have had we just been
discussing the film screening over the cheese table. All of the people I
saw that night from
TEDxNewYork asked me when it would start up
again, and explained what an important role the salons have played in
their own lives: that hearing ideas from a diverse network of people
opened them up to new ways of thinking and gave them courage in their lives
they hadn’t realized before.
It’s for these moments that we all keep coming back to TEDxNewYork.
It’s a community of people from a myriad of different backgrounds, and
in the spirit of ideas worth spreading, we watch thought-provoking
TED talks and share what they ignited for us. To stay open to hearing
others’ opinions, and to learn more creative, courageous ways to relate
to people and situations in our lives, makes us all richer human beings.
And so I am once again inspired by the TEDxNewYork community to make sure we find a home and get the salons up and running as soon as possible.
We wish you a healthy and peaceful New Year. Thanks to all of you for bringing your honesty, your ears, and your enthusiasm to our TEDxNewYork community. We look forward to sharing a happier year in 2013
with you all at our TEDxNewYork salons.
With best wishes,
Jennifer Kessler and the TEDxNewYork team
Special thanks to
our 2012 curators, designers, and connectors: Gina Bria, Christine Hart,
Stacy Mar, Mark Monchek, Bobbi Van, and Parris Whittingham
To reach us, please do NOT reply to this email, but write to tedxny@gmail.com and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.
This independent TEDx event is operated under license from TED. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At our TEDxNewYork salons, TEDTalks video and discussion will
combine to spark deep connection in a small group.
November is when things started to really take
off. We hired Jose Rincon to fill the newly-created Administrator for Artistic
and Education & Community Programs, as a way to create more fluidity across
educational and artistic initiatives (the idea being that they shouldn’t be so
separated—it’s all artistic, with slightly different audiences, repertoire, and
goals).
Hurricane
Sandy also struck New York, putting all of us back and causing much more
hardship than just the inconvenience of lack of electricity for many. People
lost their children. People lost their homes. Vanished, just like that. It made going into work and typing
up notes from last week’s meetings feel a little trite. I wrote a blog about
one volunteering experience I had during that week, here.
Soldier’s Tale, with puppets!
Despite
many, many hurdles, our production of Soldier’s Tale in collaboration with the
amazing Puppet Kitchen went off fabulously. I am deeply grateful to Emily
DeCola and her team for being so awesome, to Damon Gupton for being so flexible
and masterful as conductor and host, to the whole team at Hunter College’s Kaye
Playhouse, to my wonderful team at OSL, and to the musicians and actors who
made the production come to life.
Lessons
learned: always be honest with everyone, including yourself. And work with
friends whenever you can and it makes sense. Texting Emily on that Friday in
October was the best call, ever.
Here’s what
I told Matt at the beginning of December: you’re not going to see a whole lot
of me in the next couple of weeks. Basically, when the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra comes to town, it’s one big party, and I was thrilled to spend as
much time as possible with all of the people I love and admire who are a part
of this movement.
Symposium in Philadelphia, Dec. 3-5
Mark, Jose,
and I met up for a Symposium on El Sistema, hosted by Stanford Thompson and
Play on Philly. Sistema Fellow Elaine Sandoval wrote an excellent article on the Symposium which can be found in the January 2013 issue of The Ensemble.
To subscribe to The Ensemble, send an email to TheEnsembleNL@gmail.com
December 8, Discovery Day at Carnegie Hall
Dress
rehearsal of SBSOV. The Revueltas was like a force of nature. What a percussion section!
Really, check this movement out:
Following the rehearsal was Discovery
Day at Carnegie Hall. Keynote by Leon Botstein, follwed by the Dudamel movie, and a panel with
Abreu and Dudamel, moderated by Jeremy Geffen.
Afterward,
Ann Gregg gathered the nucleo leaders and myself to meet in a back room with
Maestro Abreu and Gustavo Dudamel. Jose Luis Hernandez Estrada was there, and it was so meaningful for me
to sit next to him only months after our trip to Venezuela and be able to share
our intention to connect the existing programs in NYC as well as start our own
nucleo. While I was busy with OSL making a case for supporting Sistema
programs, Jose Luis wrote a new book about Sistema. And he’s become close with
Abreu, as an ambassador to Mexican nucleos. I’m so proud of that guy.
From left: Julie Davis, Avi Mehta, me, Jose Luis, and Maestro Abreu, meeting in Caracas in April 2012
The spirit
in the room was palpable – everyone seemed a little nervous and very excited to
share their programs and plans with the Maestros. Gustavo stood there looking
pretty pleased. And it gave me great joy to share with Maestro Abreu where
we’ve arrived since I last saw him in April. He encouraged us to continue to
work together and start an association in NYC to be able to help each other
collectively, like by launching an instrument campaign that would benefit all of our
programs. He said he would help in any way he could. That man has a sparkle in
his eyes, and when he says something, you can pretty much believe that he’ll
follow through. What an extraordinary day.
Sessions at The
DiMenna Center, organized by Heath Marlow, Dec. 10 and 11
Heath, formerly of Community Music Works, is now Program
Director of the Sistema Fellows program at NEC. He wanted to organize sessions
for the Fellows during the New York events so they could discuss various topics
with the leaders of the Sistema movement. I offered our spaces at DMC, which
seemed to be a perfect meeting place for them. On the first day, Gretchen
Nielsen led everyone (current Fellows, Mark, Jose, several other guests) in a
logic model exercise, much like she did with us last year. (For those of you
unfamiliar with the expression, a logic model is a clever planning exercise to
dream really big and identify your vision, the resources you need to turn that
vision into a reality, and all of the outcomes you hope to see as a result of
that vision.) What was surprising was the lack of music mentioned in peoples’
visions for their programs. Our vision last year was this golden dream of a
program: a house that was spilling over with music-making, whole neighborhoods
transformed by music and participating in music at a high level. This years’
Fellows, though, seemed to be more focused on the social outcomes. I wondered what they were getting out of the session (for me, it was
transformative when we went through it), but then again, I couldn’t stay for
the whole thing so I may have missed the heart of the conversation.
On the second day, Eric Booth led a larger group in discussions
that connected to other conversations and themes that arose across the country
during the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra's tour. The topics centered mostly around
the motivation of the learner, and we also tapped into race and ethnicity and
addressing assumptions in our work as administrators and teachers. It was exciting to be a part of the
conversation and host it at our home. I was particularly thrilled to see who
came: it was like all of the rockstars of the Sistema movement in one place!
Jamie Bernstein, Karen Zorn, Erik Holmgren, Gretchen Nielsen, Eric Booth, all
of the current fellows, three former Fellows, and Ken Cole from the National Guild for Community Arts Education. I hope that this is just the beginning of many more conversations and
professional development sessions on Sistema-inspired work at the DMC.
The moment
of realization that this day was turning into a success came while I stood in a
pitch-dark room. You could not see your hand in front of your face, let alone
the faces or instruments of the dozen or so other people in the room with you.
And yet it
was here, while I listened to Victor, a percussionist with the Simon Bolivar
Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, enthusiastically explain to his 3 young
students that it’s necessary to feel the
music, to see the rhythm not with our eyes but with our hearts, that I felt the
same inspiration and excitement at learning and teachingmusic as I did when I last visited Venezuela
in April. Victor wouldn’t let up—the children said, “But we can’t see our mallets!
How are we supposed to play?” And he insisted, “Just listen! Listen to this…
imagine you’re in a forest in Brazil…” We all began to hear rhythms coming from
the center of the room (he must have found a conga or something similar in the
darkness). He played the most intricate rhythms that filled the darkness with
its beats as it grew in dynamic and pace. While we were taken over by the
sounds, he shouted, “Now join me!” There were protests above the drumming of
“But we can’t SEE!” to which Victor replied: “You don’t have to see! You need
to feel it! That’s what being a percussionist is all about! Play with your
hands if you can’t find your mallets!” Slowly, we could hear the students
joining in, and the sound grew and grew until we had in our Learning and Media
room at The DiMenna Center a true drum circle, made up of one young adult
Venezuelan, two 9-year olds, and a 7 year old beginner. When Victor finally
allowed the lights to be turned on, the children were grinning ear to ear; they
had learned the rhythm and were playing along with their teacher with victory
in their eyes.
Many of the other
students’ experiences were similar throughout the day. Imagine 150 young students from across New York City
El Sistema-inspired programs, working all day long at The DiMenna Center with members of
the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra and playing together in a final performance in Cary Hall, brimming
over with proud parents, teachers, program directors, and friends. Carnegie
Hall did a remarkable job of bringing everyone together (this wouldn’t have
happened without their initiative) and organizing the details of the day, and
the OSL team did an outstanding job ensuring that day ran as smoothly as
possible at our spaces.
But what’s
most interesting for me is what some of the outcomes were for the students. I
think we assumed most of this, but I thoroughly enjoyed talking to the kids
afterwards and asking them what they thought of the day.
“I loved
being surrounded by the sound of a big orchestra. I’ve never played in an
orchestra that large before!”
“I liked
getting to meet and play with other kids from different parts of the city.”
“I really
liked learning from the Venezuelan musicians—I learned so much about my instrument and the music today!”
“I liked
coming to this building—it felt special to play here.”
And we
didn’t pay them to say any of that!
Were there
things we could have done differently? Absolutely. Did we miss opportunities to
engage the families who were in the room and to make deeper connections among
the students? Most likely. But for a first go-around at a Seminario, everyone
seemed to have an excellent time.
Did you notice how this concert took place a day after the
Seminario? Yep. That’s how we rolled. But it did mean that while we were all
burning the candle at both ends, we had the following week to play catch-up at
our computers.
This was the orchestra’s first holiday sing, and it was led
and arranged by TomCabaniss.
David Rosenmeyer was the conductor, and there was such a wonderful spirit of
joy in the room that evening. I think I saw almost every staff member there
singing along, too, which was also pretty cool.
Tom
guided the audience through songs in 4 part harmony and rounds. The songs were
mostly Christmas carols, with a Hebrew song and some spirituals thrown into the
mix. He made everyone feel safe to sing along as they felt comfortable.
I was
sitting on the side with audience members from the Brooklyn Adult Learning
Center, and a few of them had never been to a concert. My favorite moment was
during the Charpentier, when the woman behind me – confused as to whether to
sing—asked, “What do we do now?” to which I replied, “You get to listen!” She
seemed pleased with the response.
We sang "I like to go to Peaslee's," which isn't on this clip, but here's some other P.D.Q Bach (Peter Schickele) for your enjoyment:
So what do the next 6 months hold? A whole lot of planning
for the future. We do plan to launch a Sistema-inspired youth orchestra in our
neighborhood, as well as to support the music for social change community in
NYC through access to OSL musicians and use of The DiMenna Center. We’re going
to need to raise money, recruit students and parents, and dream big and
carefully with many different people to try and create programs that are as
meaningful as possible to the people who participate in them.
While fundraising isn’t the purpose of this blog, I’m sure
you all know how important every contribution is to making these dreams
possible. We have a campaign to support our violin coaching program, which WILL
take place in two schools this year and which will become the basis for our
future orchestra program in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. If you can and
would like to support a truly excellent organization, please consider donating
here.
Thank you, and I look forward to sharing where we’ve arrived
in the spring!
Sometime towards the end of last week, I decided that
instead of sitting in my safe, electrically-supplied apartment reading the news
about Hurricane Sandy and visiting with friends, I should go out and actually help
people who were affected by the storm. But volunteering brings up some very
strange and conflicting emotions, mostly of the procrastinating/avoidance
variety: how would I figure out where to go in Brooklyn? (Google, Jennifer.)
What if they don’t need my services? (They do.) What if they need me for 8
hours only but I can only stay for 4? (You won’t know until you go.) I was
about to go on Saturday when I read on Facebook that the Park Slope Armory was
turning people away. Guiltily, I thought, “Oh, good. Now I won’t have to feel
so bad about going to that party I was planning to go to instead.”
But I did make plans with a friend to get up at 7.30am
Sunday, an almost Sisyphean task for me. The alarm went off, and as I lay
there, I considered several reasons why I couldn’t go. I was exhausted and
had recently gotten over being sick; I couldn’t possibly have a relapse and
miss more work. There were undoubtedly many other volunteers who could help.
Maybe my friend would cancel.
Well, she didn’t, and I felt equally discouraged and grateful for our holding each other
accountable. We arrived at the Park Slope Armory around 8.30am, and there
weren’t so many volunteers after-all. Just after arriving, I realized they
really do need help. There are a few hundred people staying there, mostly
elderly and mentally disabled who had been displaced from their homes in the Rockaways. I wondered who the volunteer leaders
were—are they part of an organization? Had they been there all week? Turns out they were just like me, members of the community who wanted to help out
and came to volunteer shifts whenever they could.I began to feel really good that I had gotten
out of bed.
During a short orientation, we were told about several
tasks, including handing out the donation items, working with groups of
residents in their rows of beds, cleaning the bathrooms and helping people use
the toilet (to which I thought, Please, anything but that), and organizing
supplies for the space.When we went to
get our assignments, I wondered if they would type-cast. Would they see me and
think, She’ll be great for serving breakfast? Or walking the residents around the
track for some exercise?
If type-casting were the case, then whatever it was in my
appearance led the task assigner to take one look at me and say: “Bathrooms.” No!
Anything but that! But I was there to help as I was needed, so what was I going to
say? Sorry, I really would prefer handing out sweatpants? So I smiled, said
something mean to myself about the girls behind me who looked pleased that
they didn’t get bathroom duty, and walked over to the ladies’ room.
It was pretty clean. The volunteers who had been there
before me showed me that we clean the toilets, and all surfaces that people
touch, as soon as they finish using a stall. I was shown where the extra
supplies were: adult diapers, trash bags, plastic gloves. This wasn’t going to
be so bad, after-all.
Women started coming into the restroom, some in wheelchairs,
some not. They hadn’t had showers since Monday, and we had been told that some
of them may want to clean off with baby wipes in a stall. They were all friendly
and greeted us warmly. We started chatting about various things. And slowly I
began to notice that every woman who went to the sink to wash her hands would
take some time to look at herself in the mirror, brush her hair, freshen up.
One older resident, decked out in donated sweatpants, took out a red lipstick
and put it on. After brushing her hair for awhile, she turned to the volunteers
and asked, “How do I look?” Lovely! (It really was a great lipstick color.)One volunteer complimented a resident’s hat.
The resident looked delighted and replied, “Oh, thank you! I love this hat-- I got it in Jamaica, where I grew up.” This led to a conversation about the islands and the resident singing a song from her home country.
Then came a woman named Susan*. Susan had some mental
disabilities, and was escorted to the ladies’ room by a young man. She told me
she didn’t really need to go to the bathroom, but that all she wanted was a manicure. "My nails are in really bad shape," she said. "Do you have a nail file?” (We didn’t.) Then she said, “You know, I’d really
just like to wash my hair. It’s been days.” I noticed some new hand towels, and
small bottles of shampoo. Susan had very short hair, so I asked her if
she’d like my help washing her hair. “Yes, please!” she said. I walked her over
to a sink, covered her with one towel and began to
wash her hair as she bent over the sink. As I was giving her a little head massage, I
realized that this woman probably hadn’t been touched in a very long time. I
know that when I get my hair cut, the hair-washing part is my favorite. When we
were done and Susan lifted herself back up, she looked like she was in a state
of bliss. She thanked me and the other volunteer helping her, and then said, “That
was just wonderful. You know, I really could use some lipstick. Do you have any
lipstick?” (No, it seemed that beauty products took a back seat to supplies like toilet paper and water.)
Women continued to come in and out of the bathroom. Some had
wet themselves, others needed assistance on the toilet, while others were
volunteers waiting to bring residents back to their beds. And every single
woman who came into that bathroom spent a few moments in front of the mirror,
fixing herself up. Regardless of the fact that they hadn’t showered in days,
were wearing other peoples’ clothes, were living in a cold strange place, they
still sought to be beautiful, to look good for the world (or at least for their
own image). One older woman came in and started to sing “I’ll Take Manhattan”
with one of the volunteers, exclaiming,“No one ever dances and
sings along with me! This is wonderful!”
We laughed, we talked make-up and body lotion, we sang a
little. And I thought, this isn’t that much different than the ladies’ rooms at
the Met Opera, or anywhere else, for that matter. It’s a safe space where women
bond, discuss life, apply their lipstick and fix their hair, occasionally
compliment each others' clothes. It’s a place where we all feel safe to share a
tiny piece of our shared femininity, whatever that little kernel is in
many of us to strive to feel good about ourselves, no matter what position we
are in. Shelter or opera, hospital or gala event, most of us women will still
take a moment to look in the mirror, fix our hair and make-up, maybe
even exchange a smile and a compliment with another woman. And as we leave that
bathroom to whatever lives we have outside of it, we can hopefully feel
comforted in knowing that we’re not alone.
Later in the day, while buying more sweatpants for the residents, I bought some lipsticks and gave one to Susan. (I loved her first response before thanking me: What color did you get?) As I left the Armory, I whispered to the incoming women volunteers, "Ask to be stationed in the ladies' rooms. It's the most fun place in the building."
(If you're looking for a place to volunteer, the Armory will need people Sunday night, and most likely during the workweek during normal business hours. If you'd like to donate materials, the shelters are in need of large and extra-large sweatpants and underwear. And maybe some lipsticks and nailpolish...)
