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LITTLE STARS TWINKLE
 | | Bryant and one of her budding cellists |
Two days a week, Claire Bryant, a recent graduate of The Juilliard School, rides the subway to PS 157 in the South Bronx. She has been teaching cello at the elementary school for a month, and on a recent Wednesday afternoon, her fourth-grade students seem very happy to see her; as she walks into the music classroom, they greet her with hugs and smiles. The students retrieve their cellos and violas from shelves in the back of the room and form a semicircle of chairs around the director of the school’s strings program, Ms. Carter, whom Claire assists. On the brightly decorated walls of the room, Claire notices a new addition: the students have made a full-size replica of a cello with a colored cardboard body and strings of yarn. “Did you guys make this?” Claire asks. A few shy smiles, a few nods. “It’s amazing. I love it!”
Claire is one of 16 young musicians who were invited to participate in the pilot phase of a fellowship called The Academy—A Program of Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, and The Weill Music Institute. After a year of freelancing gigs and teaching privately, Claire found the fellowship an appealingly structured and supportive program. (She and all of the other pilot-stage fellows have signed on for phase two, which begins this fall with almost as many new fellows joining them for the next two years.) In addition to teaching in public schools around the city, participants in the program receive intensive performance training from master artists and educators, and they also get the chance to give concerts at Carnegie Hall and Juilliard.
As sounds of tuning fill the music room, Claire walks among the chairs, tightening bows and adjusting tuning pegs. The students do a few warm-up exercises and then start to play “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” As the song begins, Ms. Carter offers some practical advice: “If you mess up a note, just leave it on the floor and look for the next one.”
When Ms. Carter first arrived at PS 157, she found a dozen broken instruments in the school basement. But within three years, she and the school’s principal, Ms. Duran, won funding for new instruments from such organizations as VH1’s Save the Music Foundation and built a thriving strings program with over 300 students. Now she has a waiting list of 20 kids who want to play the cello.
When she heard about the new fellowship program
 | | Ms. Carter |
After Ms. Carter finishes with the violists and violinists, Claire takes over the classroom and works with a group of fourth-grade cellists. Before they start to play, Claire asks a key question: “Did you guys name your cellos this week?” They did. “Jaheebi,” one girl says. “Annabelle,” says another. Each student in the semicircle says the name of his or her instrument and then plays an A.
After a unison rendition of “Twinkle,” Claire leads a colorfully metaphorical set of exercises to promote good technique. To help the students understand the different bow movements, she guides them through a series of motions—first the Ferris Wheel; next the Windshield Wiper; then Stir-the-Soup. As the students move their bows in circles above imaginary cauldrons, Claire asks, “What kind of soup today?” “Chicken,” says one girl. “Vegetable,” says another.
Despite having to work under various constraints—including just 30 minutes of practice time each week, as well as a limited supply of instruments that falls far short of student demand for participation—some of the youngsters have shown tremendous potential and interest. Ms. Carter recalled the story of a boy who auditioned for Juilliard’s MAP program, a competitive music-enrichment initiative that offers Saturday lessons and classes. “He had only played the cello once a week for a year. His parents made $11,000 between them, so buying an instrument was not an option. But he made it to the finals, and the school took up a collection and bought him a cello.”
On the walls of the classroom at PS 157, Ms. Carter has tacked photographs of herself with chamber orchestras in Tunisia and Moscow. An accomplished violist, she played for years in The American Symphony Orchestra under conductor Leopold Stokowski and toured internationally with various ensembles. But the photos are more than emblems of her nostalgia. They are meant to encourage her students. “I want students to ask where these places are,” she says. “I want them to know they might be able to travel the world if they keep playing.” Given the enthusiasm of these students and the skill of their teachers, this dream has a real chance of coming true.
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