Chamber Music Update: The Chittick Peace Quintet

There are three weeks until this school year’s musiConnects programming comes to the end, and we’re all going into reflection mode. Today, before rehearsal, one of our Shostakovich groups, the Chittick Peace Quintet (who you may remember from the earlier blog post Girls Going Places With Chamber Music) did some free writing. The writing prompt was “The Chittick Peace Quintet Is…”

They wrote quietly at the table for ten minutes.

Reflective Writing Time

Here is what each of them wrote (as read aloud):

Ayiana: The Chittick Peace Quintet is an amazing group of five young girls playing music and having fun. At times it is not always work work work. Sometimes we make mistakes but our teacher is always there to help. People that have music are the same as everyone else. That is what the Chittick Peace Quintet is all about.

Avrie: The Chittick Peace Quintet is a sensational group. We have been together for nine months. We get along together, play music together and sometimes have a great laugh and act silly. It’s kinda like we’re a family. We are called the Peace Quintet because we’re full of peace and friendship.

Amie: The Chittick Peace Quintet is good exposure for me because when I started I didn’t know if I was ready. But I got through it all because I had teachers there to help me. We’re a family too. Look at where I am, standing with one of the greatest music teachers in the world because of my mom and my music teachers. But one more thing: I have to thank Daelen, Ayiana, Avrie, and Hadassah. We are peace. Peace.

Hadassah: The Chittick Peace Quintet is loveful and careful of what they do and they don’t give up on each other. The fun thing about it is we know about the things that are fun and mindful to us and if one person is mad of course everybody is going to feel bad because that is how a team works together.

Daelen: The Chittick Peace Quintet is…crazy, fun, exotic, wonderful, amazing, tremendous, colorful like a family.

As the teacher of this group, I agree with all of them, and could add more. They have come together very beautifully as a chamber group. Any chamber musician — student, professional or avocational — could learn something from watching how they interact as musicians and teammates. They always make sure everyone’s voice is heard. They are open and frank and supportive of each other’s ideas. They share a sense of humor and playfulness. The thrust of the work we’ve done together this year is that as they play chamber music, they must – at all costs – connect with each other and not let go until the final notes finish ringing. In order to stay connected, they listen widely and carefully and play in a way that is welcoming to everyone in the group, that keeps the energy in the center, where everyone’s sounds are mixing.

To be honest, the work they have done this year has not resulted in an impressive-sounding, flashy performance piece. In fact, their musicmaking sounds quite raw; you would not want this quintet to play at your wedding (at least not yet). Harmonic intonation has not been a big topic. We haven’t gotten into discussion of dynamics, tone, phrasing. Their piece “Gimme a Cue” (which the girls LOVE, written by Betsy Hinkle) doesn’t pretend to be something more than elemental: it’s a simple jazz-like harmonic progression in rhythmic unison, and that’s enough for now. There will be time in 5th grade (and beyond) for polish and complexity. That’s not what this year was about. This year has been a year of hard labor: these girls (and our other Shosties too) have built a shared structure that will allow them to explore all that music has to offer – as a team.

Artists in the Community: BPQ partners with Celebrity Series

This year, we, the BPQ, embarked on an exciting partnership with the great performing arts organization, the Celebrity Series of Boston. As Celebrity Series Artists-in-Community (AIC), we brought the experience of live performance to audiences who are unable to or uncertain about visiting traditional performance venues. In conjunction with performances at the Harriet Tubman House in the South End, St. John/St. James Church in Roxbury, and the Mattapan Library, we gave performance-based educational presentations in four Boston Public Schools: Timilty Middle, Hurley Elementary, and our own beloved Sumner and Chittick Elementary.

We’re excited for a second season as Celebrity Series AIC ensemble; in fact, we’re already busy making plans! But before any more time passes, we need to update our musiConnects friends on what’s happened so far. There’s already danger of this blog post turning into a novel!

Artists in the Community: Educational Presentations in the Boston Public Schools

Thanks to the Celebrity Series school workshops at the Hurley, Chittick, and Sumner schools, the Boston Public Quartet explored and developed relationships with new friends in two ways – as people and listeners. As the neighborhood quartet of Boston, this was a fantastic chance to connect with and foster active listening in our young neighbors in the South End, Mattapan, and Roslindale.

The question in front of us –

How can we, as a string quartet with music of Beethoven, Gideon Klein, and Schubert ready to go, convey powerful listening techniques to audiences?

In preparation, we locked ourselves in Jason’s apartment for three hours (always a surefire method of deliberation).  Conversation wound through a hearty brainstorm – ideas leapt from sketch comedy, to lectures on Beethoven’s turbulent personal life, to a video of salsa dancing – until we uncovered the skeleton of a workshop. It was framed around four “aural lenses,” or filters through which one could enjoy a live performance. These we called The Detective, The Dancer, The Poet, and The Storyteller. With some luck, we believed these lenses could heighten their listening experience and make newcomers to classical music feel like seasoned concertgoers.

Each portion of workshop invited students to try on a new lens. First, Marji introduced “The Detective.” This listener uses “just the facts,” sensory information collected with the eyes and ears to understand the music. With her trusty Sherlock Holmes cap, she helped students follow the dominant line of the violinist and supportive commentary of the cellist and violist in Schubert’s String Trio in B flat, I. Allegro Moderato. You would be astounded at the number of observations and questions these students had!

When they had enough of watching us have all the fun, swaying and making faces to the music, Jason reminded everyone that sometimes the best way to listen to music is be “The Dancer” and let your own body respond. He and Betsy floated out of their chairs and danced to the groove of Lev Zhurbin’s “Bagel on the Malecon,” without ever dropping a beat. There were not many brave middle-school souls standing to join but the students sure enjoyed watching those two show off their moves!

Next up, as“The Poet,” I invited the class to feel the vast emotional contrasts in the slow, Theme and Variations movement of Gideon Klein’s String Trio (1944).  It begins with a folk melody thumping like a heartbeat. Students joined us in singing this tune and shared some amazing personal memories that came up as they listened, from trips with friends to get ice cream to funereal services of family members.

Nearing the end of the workshop, “The Storyteller” appeared. Betsy, the leader of this portion kept “forgetting” to come in with her next line because she was so absorbed in a book! Of course, that is just what we wanted them to think. Saying proudly, “Storytelling is my favorite way of listening,” she welcomed the students to use their imagination to invent a story of their own as we played the final movement of Beethoven Op. 95.

Overall, the workshop landed well with our new audiences. The workshop was built to say, “You, as a listener, are an equal partner in a live performance.” It is a simple equation: by lending us their ears, the quartet could bring the music to life and by framing listening as four characters, the students could let their creative ideas take shape, as well. All they needed was an open mind, a raised hand, and a strong voice (the added pencil and paper did not hurt).

Thank you to all who made these workshops possible! Through them, we met an extraordinary new collection of students and teachers and discovered listening tools that have changed our rehearsals and performances ever since.

- Michael, BPQ cellist

Our New Friends at the Celebrity Series

Our quartet has truly found kindred spirits at the Celebrity Series of Boston  – three in particular:

1) Gary Dunning, the warm and thoughtful executive director: new to Celebrity Series last year, Gary brought to the executive directorship of the organization a vision to prioritize depth, quality, and relevance of arts experiences for a wider, more diverse audience. He was drawn to the Boston Public Quartet’s work because of its emphasis on creating lasting relationships with the children and families of Boston. We were excited that he noticed and valued that. And we’re learning a lot from him; in particular, we appreciate how he consistently models ways of thinking of the “big picture” and acknowledge complexity all at once.

2) Robin Baker, the new Manager of Community Performances and Partnerships: we have had a chance to get to know (and appreciate) Robin very well because she is the one who organized the details of this new Artist in Community program, including setting up and publicizing all related events (which she did effortlessly and with imaginative detail), and attending the events as our fifth, best quartet-mate. Her ideas and feedback at each event were indispensable; she served as a surefire set of outside eyes, ears, and antennae as we felt our way through our presentations and concerts in a dizzying variety of non-traditional settings, for all kinds of listeners. We could go on and on, but in a nutshell:  Robin’s a kind and forthcoming, wise and artistic person, and we’re a much more flexible, agile quartet because of her input.

3) Robert Torres, the CS Staff Photographer and Graphic Designer: Our quartet had a ton of fun working with Robert on our photo-shoot, and the posters he designed for us are really superb. He is also a friendly, comforting soul to encounter at school visits and community concerts. Our quartet has so much more fun doing our thing when we know he’s there, and above all, he is amazingly good at capturing moments while we’re going crazy playing and teaching.

In our most recent meeting with Robin, we discussed ideas for the 2013-2014 season, which happens to be the Celebrity Series’ 75th anniversary year. The CS staff has some exciting ideas about how our quartet (and our students) will participate in the celebration, including collaborative performances with other Artists in the Community groups. We think you should be the first to know that CS is scheming an incredibly ambitious, whimsical, public “happening” for fall 2013; we’re sure it will make an impact on Boston for years to come…stay tuned!

-Betsy and Marji, BPQ violinists 

Girls Going Places With Chamber Music

-by Marji Gere

On March 11, the 3rd/4th grade Chittick Peace Quintet played at an MBTA/MassDOT Diversity Luncheon at the Transportation Center downtown. The theme of the event was “Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination,” and the keynote speakers were a highway director, a business analyst, and an environmental engineer – three women leading in male-dominated fields.

The all-female quintet got the message: women can and do lead in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (and music! and education! and journalism! and…and…and…). On the train ride home, Daelen, a cellist, announced, “I’m a girl. I can do anything!” Hadassah (the violist) and Ayiana (one of the violinists), concurred that their favorite part of the event was hearing the women talk.

The quintet played two pieces. They started with “Gimme a Cue,” a piece by Betsy Hinkle. Their cues were solid, they made lots of eye contact with each other, and they projected rhythmic, expressive, unity. The spiritual “Deep River” is a real favorite for the girls–it was fun to share it again for a new audience.

The Chittick Peace Quintet with Betsy, at the Transportation Center, Downtown Boston

Between pieces, the two cellists of the group made a choice to take a moment to talk to the (very large) audience. Amie talked about how “musiConnects is like a family,” and how we “take care of each other.” Daelen drove home the crucial point: “Not many kids get to play music.” She went on to say, “musiConnects kids need to work hard because they have the opportunity.” It was haunting and agitating to hear this young Bostonian describe music education as a privilege that she may or may not deserve. Honestly, that’s the message society is sending her. Could we (her family, school, city, country, world) please show her some evidence that we believe artistic development is a not a privilege, but a right for all children?

Music Takes Time

In a recent meeting, the Boston Public Quartet and mC Guild shared with each other different strategies and tools we use in our music teaching. Jason sang the praises of his favorite book, I Can Read Music by Joanne Martin, and described a minuet composition project he was working on with his Thursday viola class. Betsy talked about fun technique exercises she’s done with her students, and pieces she’s composing for our chamber groups. Liz described the stretches she leads her students through before approaching viola work. Mike and Laura talked about cello bow-holds and a left hand exercise they call “ski jump.” Josh and I chatted enthusiastically about a Hungarian violin method with Bartók-like teacher/student duets. We compared notes about specific students, our hopes for them, and ways we’d like to develop as teachers.

Mike, Jason, and Betsy work together to get students ready for a performance.

During this conversation, it became clear (all over again) that we’re all passionate about teaching and our students; we could have stayed on the topic all day, maybe into the night. We all want musiConnects to be a music education marketplace – we love sharing and helping each other, and we know that our students benefit immensely when we act as a communicating, collaborating teaching team. But we don’t yet have the time and resources to create the infrastructure for the ideal commerce. We’re doing the best we can, and are optimistic about building toward our goal. We meet as a teaching team on a monthly basis, and as a designer, I’m developing teaching goals and materials in response to those meetings. In the near future, budget willing, we hope to meet for weekend-long teacher development workshops, build peer-mentorship into our structure, and pursue educational design as a collaborative project.

As a teaching team, we also know and feel very powerfully that we need more time with our students. Our students and their families echo this sentiment. We’d like to offer our students a great deal more time each week, and we’re strategizing how to make this happen in future years. For now, within our limited time and resources, we’re weaving together more quality time and activity where we can.

One example of this effort is a new initiative called The Shostakovich Club, an opportunity for our older Chittick students (fourth and fifth graders) to take on new responsibilities and participate in music in a wider variety of ways. Read on to learn more about this new endeavor.

Russian composer and pianist, Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)

Why Shostakovich?

The 20^th-century Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich represents many of the musical hopes we have for our students. Shostakovich took an approach to music that synthesized a deep appreciation for music of the past with a compositional practice that was innovative, expressive, and deeply personal. For Shostakovich, music was not just an aesthetic pursuit; it was a political statement – a response to the extremely challenging world he lived in. Last but not least…he wrote fifteen amazing string quartets. We love the guy. Read below about what the Shosties (the first members of the Shostakovich Club) have in store.

Shosties as Chamber Musicians

Our students continue to boost our confidence in our philosophy of putting chamber music at the center of all musical activity. In particular, our older students are showing strides in their chamber musicianship. As of this fall, they can lead themselves through the performance of a piece without teacher aid. They are enthusiastic to come to after-school and connect with their colleagues. They work together in positive, creative and productive ways, even when tasks are difficult and tensions are high. Now as newly-minted Shosties, we want to keep their momentum going with new, fun, challenging pieces and performance opportunities.

Some happy chamber musicians at the Chittick School

Shosties as Musical Literati

In order to support our students’ development as creative, curious, responsive artists, we want to offer them multiple ways to think about and work with music, especially music that comes at them in the form of standard notation. Starting this semester, we’re supplementing the Shosties’ weekly chamber music class with forty-five minutes of music literacy activity, in the form of theory assignments, puzzles, composition exercises, sight-reading, and ear-training games. In groups, alone, in play, in quiet, and in creative exploration, they will approach music through numbers, shapes, words, stories and other illuminating means.

A Student Composition

Shosties as Mentors

When students take on new leadership roles and responsibilities, they shape our musiConnects community in important ways. The Shosties – the veterans of the Chittick after-school program – have the capacity to help new, younger students acclimate to our musical community, and we are offering them a formal opportunity to do that. On the days they are not in chamber music, the Shosties will be our after-school special helpers. In Music Circle, they will model musical concepts, lead games, and help teachers with snack and bathroom break. In Chamber Music they will serve as mentors to younger musicians: this means they will participate in and help with chamber music repertoire and games, assist teachers with demonstrations, partner with students who need extra help, and lead room set-up and breakdown.

A fourth-grade violinist mentors a second grader.

Shosties as Ambassadors

Because music has a unique capacity to transcend language, politics, and other social barriers, musicians are often called upon to serve as ambassadors of their communities. We are giving the Shosties a chance to experience the broadly communicative, cross-cultural potential of music through two very different ambassadorship projects:

• The Chittick Peace Quartet will serve as ambassadors of musiConnects within the Chittick Elementary School. In classroom visits with their peers and younger classrooms, they will demonstrate how they solve musical problems and make decisions as a team. In addition, we will develop a series of videos that demonstrate different examples of “chamber music democracy” in action. See their first video here.

• The World Peace Quintet will participate in a video exchange with a quintet of young musicians in the Eastern Mediterranean island country of Cyprus. With the help of myself and Ertem Nalbantoglu, a wonderful violinist and music teacher in Cyprus, students in both communities will make a series of short videos to introduce themselves, their music-making, families, and neighborhoods to their new friends across the world. Over the course of this exchange, the two quintets will play music from Cyprus, the U.S., and beyond, teach each other words and phrases in the languages they speak, ask each other questions about life on the other side of the world, and (we hope) establish long-term friendships based on a shared love of music.

The Chittick Peace Quintet

Ertem Nalbantoglu, his music colleagues, and students in performance in a cave (!!) in Karpasia, Cyprus.

Does any of this sound interesting to you? Please watch this blog and website for updates from The Shostakovich Club!

-Marji Gere

Let’s Go, Chamber Kids!

I am proud to report that a number of students who formerly received music
instruction as participants in the Chittick residency are continuing their musical
education with musiConnects’ Community Lessons program. And, on a personal
note, I am thrilled to continue working with Johanna Stim-Phil, Clarence Joseph and
Joseph Bibb—all former Chittick students—in private lesson and chamber music
settings. We are encouraging Boston-area students to continue applying for spots in
Chamber Kids throughout the year as we are seeking to expand certain groups and
indeed create new ones if the demand requires it!

Part of the excitement of the past few weeks has been the process of choosing new
repertoire for students. Some Chamber Kids are planning to become masters of the
musical “round,” whilst others (Johanna and Joseph) have conspired to bring the
music of Star Wars to the musiConnects community in an exciting String Quartet
arrangement! We hope to follow this first foray into the music of cinema with a
John Williams medley to include themes from Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones…
And beyond the printed scores, we continue to add new improvisatory games and
exercises to our repertory (credit to Raina Hall-Brown, Samkyu Jaffe and Divya
Murthy for thinking up some awesome variations on music circle classics such
as “Rhythm Machine” and “Orchestra”).

Speaking of chamber music, one last tidbit of note: word on the street is that four
very passionate musicians and educators have begun playing together with the
intention of performing as the Sumner String Quartet…

-Josh

From Anna Deloi, From the Top Arts Leader

A few weeks ago, a five-year old Chittick kindergartener named Devon approached me in the hallway outside his classroom. He asked a simple, innocent question, “Why do you come to our school to teach music?”

Well, in case anyone else is curious about logistics, I started working at the Chittick School through From the Top’s Center for the Development of Arts Leaders – a program that pairs highschool musicians with community partner sites, to design and implement an intensive, year-long outreach project. My partner site was musiConnects. I started out there, along with my teammate Nash, as a complete beginner; our first few months were spent testing the waters of responsibility, slowly growing closer to the musiConnects students and becoming comfortable around them. We made mistakes and we did things we had no idea how to do – organizing a benefit concert in the middle of a snowstorm, and teaching a class of five year olds about concepts I didn’t understand until I was twice their age. We learned a million things that you can only learn through experience, through crouching down next to a frustrated student and teaching her how to get past the tough parts of being a musician. Or through seeing a smile on a child’s face that reminds you of the most wonderful parts.

And through it all, I fell in love with the way we were approaching music.

Music, for as long as I can remember, has been the way I’ve been able to say the things that are most important to me. But, in a way, I’d been stuck in a one-sided dialogue. As the performer, I did all the talking; I was only hoping my audience could understand me. At musiConnects, on the other hand, we were having a conversation through music; we were teaching the language to a whole group of students, who could use it to share with us as much as we could share with them.

As my yearlong From the Top project come to a close, I realized that I couldn’t imagine leaving the family I had found at the Chittick School – Betsy, Jason, Marji and Mike, the classroom teachers and all of the students. During our time with musiConnects, Nash and I had also started teaching two classrooms of Chittick kindergarteners, in an effort to spread music throughout more of the arts-deprived school. So when CDAL ended, I continued in those classes, returning every two weeks to introduce the kids to a new musical concept or genre. I enlisted “guest artists” to teach them about those aspects of music I had plenty to learn about myself – jazz, opera, and composition, to name a few. We’ve be-bopped, we’ve swung, we’ve breathed with our balloons (kindergarten translation: diaphragms), we’ve even learned to sing a Mozart aria! And through it all, the students have not only learned vocabulary and basic music making skills; they’ve learned things about music that I myself had forgotten, and things I only truly came to understand during my time with musiConnects. We drew pictures a few months back, illustrating the story of Stravinsky’s “Firebird” – a little boy drew a landscape in which instruments stretched like rainbows through the sky. And when our jazz guest artist invited them to “improvise” with their classroom instruments, there was not a voice in the room that was anything less than joyful. A girl told me, of Debussy’s “Reverie”, “When I listen to this music, I imagine my whole family and me sitting on clouds in the nighttime, and singing together”. What could be better than that?

So, do you know what? I think little Devon managed, at only five years old, to pinpoint the essential question in all of this. Not how I came to be affiliated with Chittick School, but why I continue to go there. Of all the places I could play music, and all the people I could share it with, he wanted to know why Chittick, why his class, and why him.

And that’s the big question isn’t it? Why do we do this? Anyone who has seen musiConnects in action – in fact, anyone who has ever been lucky enough to do this kind of work – could list a hundred reasons: all the things music can teach us about, the opportunities it can provide, the repercussions it can have in our lives. But really, the main reason that I go to Chittick is to listen to kids like Devon. Because what he didn’t understand was how much I’ve come to care about what he has to say.

Music, for as long as I can remember, has been the way I’ve been able to say the things that are most important to me. So at Chittick, what I want to do more than anything is to give the kids a way to express themselves completely, and a place where their voices will be heard and valued. Once you find that, it can never be taken away. You can always escape to the clouds at nighttime, where everyone is singing. Now, I’m not sure Devon understood all of that quite yet – but I know he understood me when I crouched down to his five and a half year old height, and told him that there was no one I would rather be playing music with.

Thank you so much to Betsy and musiConnects for teaching me, inspiring me, and letting me blab about all my experiences in this blog post! Much love to all of you!

Anna DeLoi

Click here to watch the Chittick Kindergartners learn about Jazz!

New programming for older students

A string quintet in rehearsal at the Chittick Elementary School, April 26th, 2012

In 2012-2013, musiConnects is planning to nurture what has become a beautiful pattern: we will offer an introductory class to the new first graders, and promote new second graders into our full programming: weekly private lessons, chamber music, and Music Circle. But we also want to provide new, exciting enrichment activities for the returning musicians in grades 4-8, most of whom have been in the program since 2008! We marvel at these students’ rich and comprehensive curiosity about music; they wonder about how they fit into the wider musical world, they love to learn about music theory and composition, and they are interested in how musiConnects works as a public service organization. musiConnects is very excited to guide these growing young ladies and gentlemen in their musical and musically social pursuits!

Here is what is in store for them (in addition to lessons, music circle and chamber music) during our 6th season:

We are seeking partnerships with an orchestra, a chamber music concert series, and a compatible organization that provides long-term music education opportunities to under-served youth. We hope such partnerships will include inspiring and meaningful concert experiences, creative exchanges, and new friendships for our musiConnects students. Do you want to be one of these partners, or do you want to help us seek out interesting opportunities? Email us at info@musiconnects.org.

We will have our first musiConnects overnight music camp adventure!

Lastly, and most importantly, these 4-8th graders will take on important new leadership roles, including: mentoring younger musicians, organizing educational and social activities, and presenting on musical topics during weekly Music Circle, and at our public concerts and events.

We are thrilled to continue laying a strong foundation for these students to mature into the next generation of creative arts leaders. We also know how crucial it is for this programming to be high-quality, stimulating, and sincere as our students move into the most vulnerable times of their young lives.

~Betsy

The power of music – a quote from a musiConnects parent

Since my daughter has joined this program, we have been exposed to new places and sounds that we would have never encountered if not for the violin and the teachers who have guided my daughter and myself on this musical journey. We have been able to unlock a new world that is only possible with the key of music. The effort has been hard but the rewards have been even greater. The power of music by such young people at the concerts have touched everyone no matter their age or profession. I can’t imagine my daughter now without her trusty violin and the music it inspires.

~Donald Windett, father to Ayiana Windett

Resident Musician Jason Amos performs with Ayiana, June 2011

Ayiana performing at musiConnects Summer, 2011

Breakfast Nooks!

by Marji Gere, member of the Boston Public Quartet

The month of February 2012 will be remembered as the musiConnects Breakfast Nook Music Tour.

Portland, Maine

Our first stop was the Airport Comfort Inn, a pleasant motel that housed us in Portland, Maine the weekend of our Boston Public Quartet performance on the LARK Chamber Music Society series, as special guests of the Portland String Quartet. The night before the concert, Heather, the lovely clarinet-playing concierge, welcomed us to rehearse in the spacious breakfast nook. This space had everything: a resonant acoustic, perfect chairs, a juice machine – it even had a special storage space for violas!

The viola storage space.

Curious motel guests had a view of us through a small window, but we had enough privacy to make all the sounds we needed to make in final preparations for our big Maine debut, including etudes in the twentieth position.

Jason explores the altissimo register of the alto clef.

Following this productive rehearsal, we ventured out into the night to enjoy the sights and tastes of Portland. We were all impressed by the architecture, plazas, and lighting of the downtown area; however, all urban planning delights were overshadowed by the microbrews, pickles, and Lithuanian sausages at the Thirsty Pig, a wonderful little pub.

The Portland performance experience was a new high for us as a quartet. The Woodfords Congregational Church was a beautiful space, and we were primed from our Friday night concert at Emmanuel Church in Boston (and warmed up from a bit more quality breakfast nook work in the morning). Julia, Ron, and Paul – three of the four members of the Portland String Quartet – watched over us beautifully from the moment we walked through the church door until the end of the evening. Julia and Paul provided helpful feedback regarding balance and projection, and Ron kept our spirits light with jokes, pranks, and puns.

Before the concert, we presented a lecture on our administrative, teaching, and performance teamwork as a quartet, and Dan Sedgwick, the composer of our second piece, introduced his work with musical demonstrations provided by the BPQ.

In the concert, we performed our best yet; we felt a new depth and immediacy of interaction with the music and each other. The audience response was incredibly enthusiastic – we got a standing ovation, and many people lingered long after the concert to talk to us.

It was a blessing to have the Portland Quartet – a group that has worked together for 43 years – give so much of their time and care to us, four idealistic people new to the quartet life. During our day with them, we learned that we had more than quartetship in common – throughout their careers, they have dedicated a great deal of their time to innovative models of music education and exploring the string quartet as an applicable model in other areas, such as business. Beyond that, I found a particular affinity with Julia, who counts herself not just as a classical musician, but a percussionist – she is in two steel drum bands (I play drums in a little jazz combo and Beatles cover band!). It is special to find such kindred spirits so nearby – the BPQ is excited to know the Portland Quartet and learn more from their experiences as a team of teaching artists.

Downtown Boston, Massachusetts

The second breakfast nook was at the Courtyard Marriott on Tremont in downtown Boston. A bit more formal than the Portland nook, this space served as the green room for the featured performers at the Lenny Zakim Fund awards ceremony: the Boston Public Quartet and eight young Chittick Elementary musiConnects students. As second year recipients of a Zakim grant, musiConnects received 50% more funding, plus the honor of performing for an audience of people who lead and support grassroots organizations in the greater Boston area.

A second grader rehearses his viola part in the Marriott breakfast nook.

Though we were excited about this, the sudden task of rounding up students and their families for a Monday night after February vacation seemed daunting in an already busy time.  But, as is the pattern with musiConnects these days, families prioritized this musical opportunity, students were on top of their parts of the African American spiritual Deep River, and BPQ members happily took on the roles of travel agents and chauffeurs for excited students whose parents couldn’t leave work for the event.

The Zakim awards ceremony is an event that revitalizes faith in human kindness, courage, and agency. The master of ceremonies was Rabbi Mark Sokoll, a passionate and humorous speaker who, through Bruce Springsteen lyrics and anecdotes about Lenny Zakim (the late activist whose legacy inspires so much great work), reaffirmed the essential value of work done on behalf of the vulnerable and underserved, and the unmatchable joy that can be derived by devoting energy and resources to this work.

The three featured speakers were a Haitian-American teenager who spends her after-school time writing novels through Books of Hope, a creative writing program at the Mystic Learning Center in Somerville, the director of The Boston Project Ministries, a community center based in Dorchester, and a recent refugee from the Congo whose family has been helped by Refugee Immigration Ministry, an organization that “builds community for uprooted people to serve the common good”. Each speaker described the positive, sustaining roles of non-profit organizations in their lives and communities.

During the course of the evening, we of musiConnects were happy to be woven into this fabric of life-changing work, and pleased to respond at the end of the evening with an offering of our special brand of community-centered music.  After the ceremony, in the breakfast nook, one father told me he was overwhelmed by the remarkable work being done to make life better in Boston. Several students told me they were especially interested in the stories, especially the Congolese refugee’s harrowing escape from his war-torn country.

The standing ovation at the end of our performance, the hotel’s chandeliers, brass handrails, marble floors, red velvet couches, sparkly mirrors, buffet, and the chance to dress up in our favorite jeans, sweatshirts, three-piece suits, Easter dresses – whatever we wanted – also made a big impression on all of us. Fancy hotels do not figure into our day-to-day lives as teaching artists and young, striving families in Mattapan, and though we had fun, the question arises: what does such opulence have to do with our efforts to address basic human rights? I’m sure there would be consensus on this question among those of us who participated in this event. Our taste for extravagance is wholeheartedly aimed at the amount and quality of time, energy, and joy we devote to relationships, work, activism, and art. With a little space (a breakfast nook, a public school hallway), modest financial support, and each other we will create something worthy of the grandest celebration.

Where’s Jason?

Violist Jason Amos is on an amazing adventure this fall. He, along with Adrienne Taylor, are members of the Sphinx Virtuosi, who are touring the US from mid September to mid October. He made sure to send a message to our students from the road, in time for their first week of lessons. While we will all miss him while he’s gone, we know he is doing amazing work as always!

to find out more about the Sphinx Organization, click here

Greetings MusiConnects Students,

I’m currently sitting poolside at our hotel  in Macon, GA.  However, I assure you that Ms. Adrienne and I have been working very hard – rehearsing up to six hours a day in preparation for our 14-city tour!  Our chamber orchestra has 18 people in it: 9 violins, 4 violas, 3 cellos, and 2 basses.  We also have no conductor, so we have to REALLY listen to each other, breathe together, and do everything that we talk about in our chamber groups at Chittick.

Should you ever find yourself here in Macon, be sure to stop by Jeanne’s on Mulberry St. for some delicious soul food!  I also had the chance to stop by the local NBC station and watch my friend from high school, Michael Estimé, do his job as the Chief Meteorologist (Weather Man) on live TV.

I’m so excited to have played our first two concerts already for elementary school students because they were great listeners and really enjoyed the music.

As much fun as I’m having, I can’t wait to get back to Chittick to hear all about your summers and play more music with all of you.

Practice, practice!

Mr. Jason