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Playing for Keeps

Everyone in Mr. C's class learns to reach for the high notes.

By Lynn Rosellini

From Reader's Digest

Life-Altering Experience

It started with a violin. The girl skipped home from school that day, the case dangling by her side. Past the drug dealers. Past the burnt-out cars. Past the massive brown housing projects of the South Bronx. Up in the apartment, she locked herself in the bathroom and sat down. She opened the case, touched the strings, ran her fingers along the polished wood. "So beautiful," she murmured. Outside rose a cacophony of cursing, screaming and raucous music. This was no picture-perfect setting. Gunshots came close enough to hit the elevator. Women had been raped in the neighborhood; once a man was thrown off the roof. But when 11-year-old Lucy Mendoza* was alone with her violin, the walls of the ugly project seemed to fall away. The music, she had discovered, had a way of blocking out the rest of the world. She picked up the instrument and fitted it to her chin. Soon, the delicate notes of the G Major scale wafted beneath the bathroom door. "One -- two -- three -- and..." says conductor Jesus Concepci&#243n, and the student orchestra bursts into the opening bars of "Turn the Beat Around." "Keyboardists, listen to each other! Try to match up! Look at the baton! Look at the downbeat!" In a fourth-floor classroom of a grim public school building in the South Bronx, 65 seventh-graders are sitting or standing ramrod-straight, gripping their instruments, eyes glued to a dapper figure in the center of the room. Virtually none of these young musicians had picked up an instrument before fifth grade, when they walked into the classroom of Jesus Concepci&#243n. Yet the KIPP Academy String and Rhythm Orchestra -- composed of African American and Latino kids from one of the poorest neighborhoods in the country -- is among America's outstanding youth orchestras, with four national tours under its belt, as well as a 2002 concert at Carnegie Hall. The performances are not what's really important, though. "For me, the performances are fake -- all a show," says Concepci&#243n. "The most important thing that happens," he says, "is at practice." Can a violin be a lifeline? The little girl, wearing dirty shorts and T-shirt, with scraggly brown hair, gazed down the hall of her new school that day four years ago. This, Lucy Mendoza thought, was not at all like her old school, where kids ran in the halls and yelled at the teachers. Here at KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) Academy, a charter public school on the fourth floor of IS 151, the classrooms were still, and children walked in straight, orderly lines. Like most of the new fifth-graders, Lucy switched schools after the KIPP principal came to talk to her class one day about a special new school nearby. But within days of enrolling, she was in trouble. She talked back to a teacher, then snapped at students. She kept jumping out of her chair. For much of the year, teachers pulled Lucy aside: Sit still, they chorused, hold your tongue, be nice. Punishment was lunch alone in silence. Charlie Randall, the orchestra's founder and music director, watched the disheveled little girl come and go. He had grown up in the projects, too, and knew all about kids who breathe that atmosphere of rage. He began talking to Lucy about her hygiene and books and relationships and possibility. "This," he would say, sweeping his arm in a gesture that took in the music room, "is the way out!" Jesus Concepci&#243n has a theory. Success changes people, and the kids who come to KIPP don't often have much in their lives to feel successful about. "My job is to make children feel successful," he says. "And I do that through music." There are few sports at KIPP Academy -- no tennis or t'ai chi. Instead, each of the 245 middle school students is required to join the orchestra in sixth grade. Mr. C, as he is known, will tell you right off that his aim isn't to create great musicians. "We're teaching them to be better people," he says. With an hour of music class daily and 85-minute rehearsals weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings, the orchestra builds discipline, confidence, character skills.

The payoff? Over 80 percent of KIPP students scored above the national average in math last year; 73 percent beat the national norm in reading. Nine out of 10 KIPP eighth-graders go on to top-flight private and parochial high schools. The formula for success -- replicated in 37 other KIPP schools nationwide -- includes long school hours, substantial homework, strict discipline and engaged, gifted teachers. But the orchestra is also key. "Greatness changes someone forever," says school founder David Levin. "Having a chance to be part of a great orchestra has the potential to be a life-altering experience." * Names changed to protect privacy.

"There Are No Shortcuts"

The day Charlie Randall gave Lucy a violin she discovered that all the anger that was built up inside her seemed to flow through her fingers and into the instrument. It came out as music. Her behavior began to improve. She started listening, focusing, keeping her mouth closed. When she was halfway through sixth grade, Mr. C and Charlie Randall nodded at each other. "We wanted her to get a taste of what success is all about," Mr. C would explain later. They made Lucy first chair in the violin section. Now she would have to be a leader, setting an example for others, making sure they did their work. "Playing the violin helped with the stress," Lucy recalled later. "And then going on field trips [to Washington, D.C., Utah and California], I saw this is what I want. I could see that there are things I can do." Mr. Randall had put dreams in her head -- of college, maybe a career in teaching. Lucy practiced three hours a night now, and sometimes she wondered if her violin was more than just a musical instrument. "This could help me get where I want to go," she thought. "No one where I live plays the violin." The music rehearsal room is a cheery place, with a red bulletin board that says "Showtime" surrounded by flashing red lights. But the kids perched on rows of black folding chairs look anything but relaxed. "I hear someone whispering!" Mr. C says, glaring at his students now, drilling a keyboardist with a look that could cut glass. "It's going to get me extremely upset." Part of the orchestra's success, he believes, rests on discipline. The fifth grade spends the first two weeks of class just learning how to walk in the room, take their seats and track the speaker with their eyes. They don't even pick up an instrument until the end of the year. Mr. C once made the entire sixth grade sit out a rehearsal without playing because one student was talking. "Call me old-fashioned, but it works," he says, beaming. "The kids know I mean business." "Business," to Concepci&#243n, is not about developing musical talent -- it's developing skill. Talent, he explains, is the rare innate ability to play an instrument without much guidance. Skill is learning the lessons. "Most music teachers just want to work with the gifted kids," he says. "The fact is that less than two percent of our kids have talent. Only two percent have played an instrument before. They all start out at the same level. And each and every child feels equally important and successful." But scales and music theory are only half the class curriculum. The other half is spelled out in posters that dot the room: "Be Nice!" says one. "Work Hard!" says another. And, "There Are No Shortcuts!" If you work hard, you will succeed, Mr. C instructs. Be respectful of others, and treat them with kindness. Always stay curious. If there's a chance to learn, grab it. Later, when the classwork turns to a discussion of musical directions like andante and allegro, Mr. C points out that the notations are in Italian, then takes the opportunity to give the students a brief geography lesson. "Now how do you spell Italy?" he says as the childrens' hands shoot up. "Where is Italy located? And what is south of Italy?" "Lucy, are you in the street?" It is 11 p.m. Mr. C is on the other end of her cell phone. "Yes, Mr. C," she replies. "You're not doing anything you're not supposed to be doing, are you?" "No, Mr. C." "Okay, it's time to go upstairs now." Lucy has turned 14. She still lives in the chaos of the projects, but KIPP has become her real home. When she arrives at school hungry, Mr. Randall orders in a sandwich or Chinese food. When she shows up in dirty clothes, he or Mr. C find a clean KIPP T-shirt.

The Ticket Out

Lucy will graduate this summer with a full scholarship to an elite New England prep school and plans for college after that. Her mom is proud of her. "The girl used to be so quiet," she says. "The music opened her up." The sounds filling Lucy's mind these days are not the screams and gunshots of the projects, but the music of a magical evening. "I smiled that whole night," she says dreamily of the night the KIPP kids played at Carnegie Hall. "It felt so wonderful to show people just because we're from the South Bronx doesn't mean we can't do something great. Playing, surrounded by the orchestra, with everyone in tune, on pitch, it was just beautiful." Here is the odd thing about the orchestra. All that structure, the rules, the endless hours of rehearsal? The kids love it. "It's like you're given a million dollar bill," says 12-year-old Malcolm Brunson, referring to the day he got his cello, "and you've never been given a cent before." Juanita Ramos, 18, a KIPP alumna who graduated from prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy, said if they had taken away her electric bass, "I would have been heartbroken. The orchestra gave me something to be proud of." It's not just the orchestra they love -- it's Mr. C himself. Half Dominican, half Puerto Rican and always resplendent in crisp dress shirts and pressed slacks, Jesus Concepci&#243n is a teacher whose broad, radiant smiles vastly outnumber his fierce tongue-lashings. To him, the boys are "my son," the girls "sweetheart" or "girlfriend." When his kids nail a rehearsal, his eyes sparkle. "You were so attentive!" he booms, emphasizing attitude, not music. "So focused! You gave so much heart!" Mr. C also picks music the kids like to play. It's not rap and hip-hop, but it's not Bart&#243k, either. "Initially when you learn to play an instrument, you should play a tune you recognize," he says. "So you give them a Beyoncé tune. A kid at KIPP has heard an Alicia Keys song more often than Beethoven. That's ear training. They can match the pitch because they know the tune. Then by eighth grade, they can appreciate Mozart." Maybe another reason the kids like orchestra, though, is that the men who run it understand their world. You see, Mr. C -- yes, the dapper conductor with the poise of a young Bernstein -- was once a poor kid in the South Bronx too. Growing up about a mile from KIPP, he stared hopelessness in the face just like the rest of them. But then in the sixth grade, a music teacher gave him a battered, school-board-issue violin. "It was my ticket out," recalls Concepci&#243n, who went on to study at The Juilliard School and conduct orchestras in the Dominican Republic and New York. "I owe everything to that instrument." The teacher who gave him the violin was Charlie Randall. Sometimes, the two men -- Randall, now 58, and Concepci&#243n, 31 -- talk about just that: how success means giving back, how escape means trailing a lifeline behind you for someone else. They sit in the black folding chairs of the music room and watch for the kids who need a hug, or a wink and a smile, or love. Then they give them an instrument. And the music begins.

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