Leguizamon

Where can a Carnegie Hall internship take you? If you’re Daniel Leguizamon, right back to Carnegie Hall, albeit in a somewhat unexpected role. In 1993, Leguizamon, then a pianist fresh from Manhattan School of Music, was the eager young intern in Carnegie’s Education Department. Today, that department has expanded to become The Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, and Leguizamon is now a music teacher who incorporates the Institute’s programs into every level at his school, from kindergarten to eighth grade. As a teacher and an insider, he has been a part of the growth of Carnegie Hall’s music-education offerings from the early days.

Although the transition from arts administration to teaching was challenging at first, Leguizamon’s prior experience soon proved a great asset in selling his principals and any skeptical classroom teachers on the value of Carnegie Hall’s programs. To convince one hesitant math teacher, he explained that students “would be able not just to divide a pie into sections but to hear a fraction.”

As music teacher at Annunciation School in Westchester County, Leguizamon has earned a special place among The Weill Music Institute’s roster of educators. Students he first taught as third graders, discovering the families of the orchestra in the Musical Explorers program, then graduated to advanced recorder-playing in LinkUP!. Today, as eighth graders in Perelman American Roots, these same students are studying the Great Migration of African Americans from the South and its impact on blues music, while composing blues of their own. Few other teachers have led one group of students through both Carnegie Hall’s elementary- and secondary-school programs.

From this unique position, Leguizamon has been able to gauge how each of the different programs can impact the children. In Perelman American Roots, for instance, he sees his mostly white students experience a “moment of awe” when connecting to African American experiences in the South. Meanwhile, in LinkUP!, he watches formerly rowdy students achieve self-possession through musicianship. After music class, “there’s a sense of pride,” he says.

“It has worked wonderfully, not only with the students but also with the parents,” who are the biggest supporters of the programs, according to Leguizamon. Though his students graduate from Annunciation School after the eighth grade, he hopes to persuade their high schools to take part in Global Encounters, Carnegie Hall’s program for grades 9–12.

Has anything changed in music education since his younger days? He offers this example in answer. In his classroom, Leguizamon explains, a student in LinkUP! might not be able to grasp the concept of, say, an eighth note. But when she goes online to the Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, an educational game developed by Carnegie Hall, within minutes she is able to unlock the logic of the game without any prompting from a teacher or adult.

“Ten years ago, we would have never thought that way,” he says with a laugh.