Keyboardists, listen to each other! Try to match up! Look at the baton! Look at the downbeat!
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."
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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."
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Here is the odd thing about the orchestra. All that structure, the rules, the endless hours of rehearsal? The kids love it.
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"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."
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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 Concepción 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!"
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Mr. C also picks music the kids like to play. It's not rap and hip-hop, but it's not Bartók, 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."
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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.
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But then in the sixth grade, a music teacher gave him a battered, school-board-issue violin. "It was my ticket out," recalls Concepción, 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."
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The teacher who gave him the violin was Charlie Randall.
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Sometimes, the two men -- Randall, now 58, and Concepción, 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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