Michael Reynolds’ Classics for Kids Foundation supports string programs across the US

By Mara Sassoon | Photo Courtesy of Michael Reynolds

$8 billion. That’s the National Science Foundation’s yearly budget. Meanwhile, federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, which has suffered major budget reductions over the years and which the Trump administration has repeatedly called for eliminating, is around $160 million per year. And the disparity trickles down to the steady decline in funding for school arts programs, including music education.

Michael Reynolds, a cellist and longtime CFA professor of music, created the Classics for Kids Foundation to support youth strings programs.

“The budget cuts are devastating,” says Michael Reynolds, a cellist and longtime CFA professor of music. String programs, he says, are often the first to be cut because the instruments are typically more expensive and more fragile than wind and brass instruments. And often, trumpets, tubas, and trombones get priority if a school has a marching band.

Reynolds is working to change that. In 1997, he established the Classics for Kids Foundation (CFKF), a grant program that supports string programs serving rural and at-risk youth in all 50 states. The foundation’s matching grants fund high-quality string instruments, including ukuleles, guitars, and harps. At first, CFKF supported only public school programs, but the organization has grown over the years to back all types of youth music initiatives, such as those by Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

“Now, almost half of the programs we support are brand-new programs and initiatives that are springing up all over the country—it’s very exciting,” says Reynolds, who has played with the renowned Muir String Quartet since it was founded in 1979 and also works with Boston University Tanglewood Institute’s String Quartet Workshop. “I think there is a lot of developing knowledge that this sort of thing really helps kids to thrive—academically, socially, and behaviorally.”

The son of two violinists, Reynolds was always surrounded by music. His father founded Montana’s Bozeman Symphony and his mother started the now-thriving orchestra program in Bozeman’s public schools. Before his parents settled in Montana, “music life in Bozeman was pretty quiet. My parents gradually became the epicenter of that music life there,” says Reynolds. He joined the program his mother started and thought back to his own formative school orchestra experience when founding CFKF.

The foundation provides grants to 60 to 70 organizations each year, and Reynolds is in the process of setting up an endowment with the hopes of reaching even more. This year’s recipients had to contend with shifting their programming online due to the pandemic, says Reynolds, but “they all went virtual and were amazingly vibrant and active. Nobody shut down.”

What is most fulfilling for Reynolds is hearing from the students that CFKF grants have benefited.

“I heard from a student living in a community with gun violence who said playing the violin makes them feel safe. Giving that kind of positive experience to a kid can be truly transforming,” he says. “We are seeing how playing an instrument helps give kids a sense of meaning and joy in sometimes very tough personal, family, and community circumstances. That’s exactly what I was hoping would happen from the beginning. I’m very proud of what we are doing.”

Learn more about the Classics for Kids Foundation at classicsforkids.org.

"Maybe some form of our art will be born that we never could have imagined before the world changed."

Ginnifer Goodwin

Actors Ginnifer Goodwin (’01) and Russell Hornsby (CFA'96) provided students words of encouragement during the pandemic in their appearances on From a Distance: BUTV10 Variety Hour. Hornsby recommended students take the time to watch some of the Television Academy Foundation Interviews, a collection of almost 1,000 interviews with actors available to watch online. Goodwin told students, “This is time to reflect, to read plays, watch movies and filmed theatrical performances, write, and observe. It will serve your creativity in unforeseen ways.... I can’t wait to see what you make of things.”

The virtual showcase was produced in May 2020 by BUTV10, Boston University’s student-operated media production and distribution network.

Maria DeCotis Turns a Coronavirus Press Briefing into a Hit Video

By Taylor Mendoza | Photos courtesy of Maria DeCotis

When comedian and actor Maria DeCotis watched New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s April 19 coronavirus press briefing, she knew she was witnessing the perfect fodder for her next routine. After discussing hospitalizations, nursing homes, and testing, Cuomo switched from covering the state’s COVID-19 response to talking about his daughter Mariah’s boyfriend, who would be joining the governor’s family for dinner later that night. “He went on this long tangent. It was so mesmerizing. He just kept going and going, and I was like, ‘When is he going to stop?’” says DeCotis ('15). “He said, ‘I like the boyfriend,’ so many times, and I thought, ‘There is no way he likes the boyfriend.’”

DeCotis decided to make a parody video of the press briefing, inspired by political lip-sync videos on TikTok that were popularized by Sarah Cooper’s spoofs of Donald Trump. Using clothes and makeup she already had, DeCotis set up a tripod in her New York City apartment and filmed herself lip-syncing to the press briefing audio, then edited it all together. In the video, she plays three roles: Cuomo, his daughter, and “the boyfriend.” As Cuomo, DeCotis gets increasingly frazzled, taking an exaggerated swig from a bottle of wine and, eventually, waving around a knife while continuing to discuss “the boyfriend.” Interspersed throughout are reaction shots of DeCotis as an embarrassed Mariah Kennedy Cuomo and the nonplussed boyfriend.

Watch DeCotis’ hit parody video of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s April 19, 2020 coronavirus press briefing. Video courtesy of Maria DeCotis.

“It was basically a one-woman production company,” DeCotis says. “I played [the press briefing] over and over again, and I broke it up into parts to get the timing just right. I didn’t write it out. I figured it would be easier just to listen to it.”

DeCotis started experimenting with comedy as a member of the School of Theatre’s improv group, Spontaneous Combustion, and while studying abroad in Italy, where she took classes on commedia dell’arte. She’s since opened for Mike Birbiglia’s one-man show, The New One, on Broadway, and performed in off-Broadway productions and commercials.

But the Cuomo parody has helped her reach a much broader audience. After she posted her video to Twitter on May 1, it quickly went viral, racking up more than one million views. She was interviewed by Rolling Stone and Today. The video’s success inspired her to make other Cuomo spoofs, which she posted to her YouTube channel.

“Alec Baldwin has retweeted a few of my videos, Chrissy Teigen retweeted a couple, Lin-Manuel Miranda—which is mind-blowing—Padma Lakshmi, and Stephen Colbert retweeted a few of mine. It’s pretty exciting.”

In mid-June, Cuomo announced he was ending his daily briefings, and DeCotis’ fans questioned what she would do next. They’ll have to wait and see, DeCotis says. “I can go with whatever’s happening in the world.”