For me, the performances are fake -- all a show
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.
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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.
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"One -- two -- three -- and..." says conductor Jesus Concepción, 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!"
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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 Concepción. 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 Concepción. "The most important thing that happens," he says, "is at practice."
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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.
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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.
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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!"
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Jesus Concepción 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."
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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.
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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."
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* Names changed to protect privacy.
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