BU Today feature: CFA Students’ After-School Music Program Strikes the Right Notes
This article was originally posted in BU Today on November 28, 2018. By Joel Brown. Photos by Cydney Scott
On a rainy November afternoon two School of Music trombonists begin to play an Oskar Blume duet in a school auditorium in Roxbury. The reactions of the 20 or so children sitting on the floor in front of them range from wide-eyed wonder to the kindergartner who clamps his hands over his ears and stage-whispers, “It’s too loud!”
This is Boston After-School Music (BAM), a K-5 program recently created by three College of Fine Arts students to share their love of rhythm and melody with children who might not otherwise be exposed to music.
“We want to make a difference,” says BAM cofounder Emma Chrisman (CFA’20,’21).
The program is held every Monday at the Higginson-Lewis K-8 School, under the auspices of Dorchester’s Bird Street Community Center. The school is one of several locations where Bird Street seeks to bridge the gap between school and home for children of working parents by providing before- and after-school activities. This is a low-income neighborhood, and the kids are all students of color, some with special needs.
Like many urban public schools, Higginson-Lewis no longer has an instrumental music program. The school is named for Boston Symphony Orchestra founder Henry L. Higginson (and 19th-century Roxbury politician George A. Lewis), an irony that is not lost on Chrisman and her BAM cofounders Hannah Hooven (CFA’21) and Isaac Boll (CFA’21).