Getting South Bronx kids in tune for success
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Liza Austria, liza@upbeatnyc.org, 347.221.9177, or Mimi O'Brien, mimi.obrien@mdbf.org, 919.493.5591
Getting South Bronx kids in tune for success
BRONX, N.Y. -- Giving more at-risk children in the South Bronx hope and a better chance to succeed in school and life is the focus of a $25,000 grant to UpBeat NYC, a local nonprofit that provides free music training and orchestral instruction for kids in the Mott Haven neighborhood.
Founded in 2009 by a family of New York City musicians and operating in a public library and two churches, the nonprofit this year will serve 150 children, teens and young adults ages five to 21, as well as 10 to 15 parents and infants.
"A music program accessible to everyone in a community gives children and youth an opportunity to see the potential in their lives, shows them they have the ability to do whatever they set their minds to, and gives them a taste of creating beauty in a group through hard work," says Liza Austria, executive director and co-founder of UpBeat NYC.
Mimi O'Brien, executive director of The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation in Durham, N.C., which awarded the grant, says learning to play an instrument and perform in an orchestra “can help children in economically distressed neighborhoods overcome the challenges of low expectations and build the skills, confidence and teamwork that will help them thrive."
This grant is made as part of the foundation’s celebration of its 60th anniversary. “Mary Duke Biddle, my great-grandmother, lived part of her life in New York City. She wanted her foundation to support programs in that city, and the board takes great care to meet her expectation,” said Jon Zeljo, chair of the board of trustees.
Making music
UpBeat NYC was inspired by El Sistema, an effort that began in 1975 in the slums of Caracas, Venezuela, and now reaches millions of students throughout the world, including hundreds of thousands in Venezuela and 30,000 in 120 communities in the U.S.
Founded by Austria, a singer and dancer, and her husband, Richard Miller, a jazz saxophonist, UpBeat NYC operates with an annual budget of $200,000, and a paid staff of one person working full-time and one working part-time, as well as nine teachers who work on an hourly basis several times a week under contract, and seven volunteer instructors.
Children enroll on a first-come, first-served basis, with no auditions. Most students begin in a pre-orchestra class, learning basic music theory, not an instrument, and participating in a choir.
Next, students take classes that focus on a particular instrument like a violin or clarinet and how they work, followed by classes in which the students are part of a group receiving instruction on how to play a real instrument. Then, they become part of a string or wind orchestra. Eventually, they join an advanced orchestra that combines string, wind and percussion instruments.
Using some of the funds from the Biddle Foundation, UpBeat NYC will begin a new track for brass and woodwind instruments, and for percussion, beginning with pre-orchestra instrument instruction. The organization in the past has offered wind and percussion opportunities at the orchestra level only.
The new track will include a wind-instrument initiation class and then separate classes for clarinet, trumpet, trombone and percussion.
With 50 more students beginning to learn those instruments this year, UpBeat NYC plans within the next year to form an intermediate orchestra, and then plans the following year to form a beginner orchestra.
This fall, UpBeat NYC also will begin a new class to initiate infants and parents into the world of music. The organization already offers a choir for parents.
It will use the remainder of the Biddle funds to buy new instruments and music supplies, and support its operations.
Music to thrive
For years, UpBeat NYC has taught classes for advanced wind and percussion players, who have shown significant musical and personal progress. They and their parents report that learning to play an instrument in a group with their peers heightens and improves students' motivation, and helps build their confidence, self-awareness, capacity to focus, empathy, emotional stability and academic achievement.
"We believe that all children are innately musical," Austria says.
Tapping that natural talent is critical in a community with failing schools, a scarcity of quality programs during periods when children are not in school, and a bleak outlook among families for the education, well-being and future of their children.
Looming over children in the community are ever-present dangers and negative influences. Local rates of teen pregnancy and juvenile criminality are high, and more than half the children live in poverty.
"All our activities are designed to address the root causes of the social exclusion and isolation of children in the South Bronx," Austria says.
Those causes include the lack of positive social activities open to everyone, social acceptance of low achievement, and the absence of opportunities to pursue challenging, long-term endeavors that promote personal growth and change.
"Music can play a powerful role in preparing children to shape their own lives and become agents of improving their community," Austria says. "Through long-term musical training and experience in performing, our students develop the patience and persistence required to excel as individuals and to learn to contribute as supporters and leaders in the context of collaborative music-making."
El Sistema
UpBeat NYC has plugged into El Sistema and its network of programs in the U.S.
The organization collaborates on student workshops and shares best practices with four other El Sistema-inspired programs that serve Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, where UpBeat NYC initially was launched.
In the summer of 2015, it took 34 of its students to Caracas to take lessons and perform with their counterparts in El Sistema's main orchestra there, while some of its teachers participated in teacher training.
Teaching artists from El Sistema in Venezuela have visited UpBeat NYC to work with its students and provide training for its teachers, some of whom plan another visit Venezuela to receiving more training.
And this summer, five of its students participated at Bard College in the National Take A Stand Festival of El Sistema USA.
Family affair
As struggling artists living and working in New York City, Austria and Miller saw a big gap between the cultural opportunities within their reach and the lack of options for children living in poverty. And her family helped her see the need to create opportunities for at-risk kids.
Austria's mother, a long-time New York City public school teacher who taught her to play piano as a young child, had long been concerned about budget cuts for arts education and the growing emphasis on testing. Austria's older brother Ruben Austria, also a musician, is executive director of Community Connections for Youth, a South Bronx nonprofit that provides alternatives to incarceration for youth.
So when her late father, classical bassist Jamie Suarez Austria, learned about El Sistema and its impact in helping children throughout the world lift themselves out of poverty, he inspired Austria and Miller to launch UpBeat NYC.
Austria works on a pro-bono basis. Miller is one of the organization's two paid employees. Her younger brother John Austria, formerly a volunteer instructor, is a paid instructor. And her mother, Christine Austria, is a volunteer instructor.
While UpBeat NYC still is a small organization, the Biddle grant will allow it to continue to grow from its startup in a storefront in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn.
"My father's passion about El Sistema showed us a model for this kind of work," Austria says. "For my family, after my father died in 2010 from lung cancer, we continued to do this work and grow it. We're a little in awe sometimes by how far this has come."
About UpBeat NYC
Inspired by El Sistema, an effort that began in 1975 in the slums of Caracas, Venezuela, and has used training on instruments and orchestral music to give hope and a brighter future to millions of children throughout the world, UpBeat NYC develops social and musical skills through childhood pre-orchestra classes, private lessons, sectional groups, ensemble playing, peer mentoring, and public performance. The free program provides instruments and intensive musical engagement, including public performance, after school and in the summer.
About The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation
The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation seeks to effect positive change for the communities and people we serve. We maintain a grantmaking commitment to Duke University and to strengthen other organizations and programs in North Carolina and in New York City. Every grant aims to empower people and sustain their work in making a lasting impact in their communities. Now in its sixth decade, the Foundation funds arts and youth education programs, with a particular interest in those that serve less advantaged populations and in collaborative efforts.