Abreu Fellows head to Baltimore
“We left the week feeling refreshed, encouraged, and excited to continue working. Our experience reaffirmed the notion that every child has an opportunity to become musically literate. The OrchKids program aims to get participation from children as early as possible and has some extremely talented faculty in place to support this idea. After all that has been accomplished in one year, imagine what this could look like after 10, 20 or even 30 years…” – Daniel Berkowitz, Abreu Fellow
Last week we had the delight of joining the Abreu Fellows at their residency with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s ORCHkids program. Inspired by the success of El Sistema, ORCHkids is an after-school program (pre K through 2nd grade) for some of Baltimore’s neediest youngsters. In only it’s second year, the program is already effecting change in its students’ lives and has tangible hopes of scaling out across the city in the coming years.
The week’s events culminated with a wonderful concert at the gymnasium of Lockerman-Bundy Elementary School. Check out this video created by one of the fellows, for just some of the highlights of the week spent there.
This residency is one of many opportunities in the coming year for the Abreu fellows to experience firsthand – through observation, teaching and documentation – the work of El Sistema-inspired programs in existence around the U.S. It will provide them with some invaluable insights as they create, shape and maintain their own programs come the 2nd year of their fellowship.
For the fellows’ individual reflections on the past 6 weeks, their experiences in Baltimore and in recent workshops with such luminaries as Yo-Yo Ma, Ben Cameron, Jamie Bernstein and Ben Zander, please check out their blogs:
Abreu Fellows 2009-2010
Daniel Berkowitz
Jonathan Govias
Lorrie Heagy
Rebecca Levi
David Malek
Dantes Rameau
Alvaro Rodas
Stanford Thompson
Christine Witkowski
Katie Wyatt
