Cincinnati Enquirer / December 25, 2011 Music program provides culture of encouragement When 22-year-old Eddy Kwon steps into place before the group of young musicians, 15 pair of eyes suddenly lock onto his hands as they begin to rise. It is the universal signal that all musicians, regardless of age or expertise, understand.
The children of Price Hill don’t catch a lot of breaks, especially the young ones. The thought of having a violin or cello and studying with some of the city’s best musicians would have been as likely when the year started as a week’s vacation at Disney World.
That changed this summer when an accomplished young cellist from Boston, Laura Jekel, partnered with a non-profit community development organization, Price Hill Will, to form MYCincinnati, a free after-school music program that offers students in Price Hill the opportunity to study an instrument and play in an orchestra.
The ultimate goal? To use classical music as a tool for building community and transforming the lives of children and their families.
The idea is inspired by Venezuela’s national youth orchestra program, El Sistema. Founded in 1975 by Venezuelan economist and composer Jose Antonio Abreu, the program has spawned hundreds of orchestras, choirs, and music centers throughout Venezuela and created thousands of amazing young musicians in more than 30 countries, including Gustavo Dudamel, the 31-year-old conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
The program, featured on “60 Minutes’’ in 2008, reached this country in 2009. It arrived in Cincinnati earlier this year when Jekel, one of 10 people who trained last year at the New England Conservatory to develop El Sistema-inspired programs in the U.S., chose Cincinnati as her destination.
Jekel points out that musical excellence, though a primary goal, is really a means to a far more important end.
It’s a few minutes before 4 p.m. on a very chilly afternoon in early December. Although buses are rapidly filling with students outside Roberts Paideia Academy in East Price Hill, members of MYCincinnati stay behind, joined by students from three other Price Hill elementary schools who are dropped off by parents.
Even though they have been in school all day, they run down the hall toward a large classroom with an enthusiasm that is surprising, given the fact that they’ll spend the next two hours rehearsing and receiving the kind of musical training normally reserved for much older children.
They do it every day, Monday through Friday, and the smiles and laughter bouncing off the walls make it clear that they are here by choice.
So what is the secret? A method of learning to play an instrument that is very different from the way most Americans learn.
“In this country, practicing, especially when you are young and just beginning, is a very solitary activity,” Jekel explains. “For many kids, it gets frustrating very fast.”
Parents have to force kids to practice, and both parties frequently give up after a year or two. Playing in an orchestra is reserved for those who stick with it until high school.
“I have 15 kids begging me to take their instruments home so they can practice,” Jekel says, “but it’s because they are having a totally different kind of musical experience.”