And the Band Honked On: Elite musicians teach in public schools

New York Times
June 22, 2008
Music
And the Band Honked On
By DANIEL J. WAKIN

Correction Appended

THE classroom filled with the sounds of a band struggling to be born, a cacophony of squealing and buzzing. Middle school students in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood were trying to produce the note F.

It was early in the school year. A young professional French horn player named Alana Vegter, a thoroughbred musician trained by elite teachers, took a handful of trumpet and trombone players into an equipment supply room. Speaking in the flat tones of the Chicago suburb where she grew up, Ms. Vegter tried to coax notes out of each player. A tall sixth-grade trumpeter named Kenny Ocean, his pants sagging around his hips, played too high, then too low. A smile spread across his face when he hit it right.

“You see, every time you do it, it gets easier,” Ms. Vegter said. On her cue they all bleated together. “I’m starting to hear everybody making nice, healthy sounds,” she said, half in praise, half in hope.

So began Ms. Vegter’s year in Ditmas Junior High School, Intermediate School 62, in the Kensington section of Brooklyn. It was a year that would teach her the satisfaction of tiny victories in a place where homelessness means that some kids cannot take their instruments home to practice, where chronic asthma forces some to switch from wind instruments to percussion, where the roar of a lunchroom leaves a newcomer stunned.

Ms. Vegter, 25, was there as part of a well-financed experiment by some of the nation’s most powerful musical institutions. The experiment is called, clumsily, the Academy — a Program of Carnegie Hall, the Juilliard School and the Weill Music Institute (the institute being an arm of Carnegie).

In its second season, which ended this month, the academy extended fellowships to 34 graduates of leading music schools to receive high-level coaching and lessons in a two-year program. They play concerts on Carnegie’s stages and participate in master classes. Part of the deal is a commitment to teach one and a half days a week at a New York public school, which pays the academy $13,200 for the service.

The idea is ambitious: Mold a new kind of musician in a time of declining audiences and — seemingly — dwindling relevance for classical music. Performers focused intently on artistic development are being asked to step outside themselves and spend time away from their instruments.

“We are working to equip musicians who will continue to grow,” said Clive Gillinson, the executive and artistic director of Carnegie Hall. “We’re looking at the life of the musician of the future, what it could be and what it will be. If we can enable musicians to become utterly fulfilled, they will end up contributing far more to society and to music.”

It is a noble goal, and maybe a tall order, given the glut of musicians who continue to pour out of music schools to face a life that has always been tough psychically and economically — whether for a Mozart groveling before royalty or a modern-day conservatory grad struggling through orchestra auditions in the provinces.

The academy is also intended to give a concrete boost to music education, which is held to be in serious decline: both a cause and an effect of the diminishing stature of classical music.

The program had its growing pains. One fellow was asked to leave for blowing off his teaching commitment. Others scoffed at the mushiness of teacher-training sessions. And a year spent following Ms. Vegter at Ditmas showed how high-minded concepts can run smack into reality.

At the same time the year demonstrated how one talented musician could be made wiser as a player and person, and how a little personal attention from an emissary of high culture could improve the lives of children.

MS. VEGTER, WITH HER AUBURN HAIR pulled back in a ponytail, has the carriage of a jock and the looks of a prom queen, which she once was. But her jock world was band, and her town of 13,000 people, Lemont, Ill., is band country. It is a community where music education works.

The majority of middle schoolers are in band. Competitions begin in the sixth grade. Band boosters pay for travel, instruments and uniforms. Band alumni come back for homecoming. The Lemont High School band won the state championship in its division from 1998 to 2005, including three of Ms. Vegter’s years there. Four of her classmates are professional musicians. “People respected it,” she said.

She was held in awe by fellow students in high school. “She was probably one of our top one or two or three all-time that we’ve had,” said David Nommensen, her band director.

Ms. Vegter’s father owns a carpet-cleaning company. Her mother died when she was 16. Inspired by a French horn-playing baby sitter, she began the instrument at 10 and showed immediate talent.

At DePaul University in Chicago she studied with Jon Boen, the principal of the Lyric Opera of Chicago. She played in the school band and orchestra and in the respected Civic Orchestra of Chicago, a training ground of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She went off to Juilliard for her master’s degree, one of two horn players admitted as graduate students that year, and studied with the exacting Julie Landsman, a co-principal of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.

On the cusp of a career Ms. Vegter displays the idealism of the young. “I am a musician simply because music is what makes me most happy in life,” she wrote this spring in an e-mail message distilling her feelings. “Nothing else measures up. Not a steady paycheck, not social status.”

Her instrument is fickle. Yet “when everything lines up and playing the horn feels easy,” she said, “I feel so incredibly alive.”

Ms. Vegter is realistic about her prospects. She wants to play in a major orchestra but knows how hard it is to win a spot. Yet she remains sunny. “People who work hard and mean well tend to have things work out,” she said. Whatever happens, music will remain a large part of her life, she said.

BY LATE OCTOBER all the fellows had been assigned schools and teachers to work with. For Ms. Vegter, it would be Meghan McDevitt. She too was a 25-year-old product of a Midwestern suburb — Hudson, Ohio, near Cleveland — and a self-proclaimed band nerd.

Ms. McDevitt was hired in 2006 by I.S. 62’s principal, Barry Kevorkian, to revive a moribund band program. She had her work cut out for her when she arrived that year and walked into the band room. “I opened the doors, and we had instruments from 50 years ago,” she recalled. “I said, ‘O.K., let’s go.’ ” The school allotted her $20,000 to buy new instruments. She teaches three bands and a general music class, and gives individual instruction. The work, she said, has proved exhausting.

Ms. McDevitt is one of 958 music teachers for 1.1 million students in New York public schools.

The Education Department says it has increased the amount of arts education, including music, in recent years. It did not provide figures on how many students receive music instruction but said 69 percent of middle schools offered music during the 2006-7 year. Thirty-one percent of seventh graders and 25 percent of eighth graders received some music education. But nearly one out of five schools had no full-time arts teacher.

Music education — all arts education — was gutted during the city’s fiscal crisis in the mid-1970s. Before that almost all children in the system were exposed to music, whether chorus, band, orchestra or general classes, said Richard Kessler, executive director of the Center for Arts Education, which supports arts education in the city’s schools. They filled the ranks of all-borough and all-city ensembles, took private lessons and theory classes and played chamber music on weekends.

ON OCT. 16, MS. VEGTER’S FIRST DAY of school, she took the subway from an apartment on West 71st Street in Manhattan that she shares with a roommate, riding the Q train to the Cortelyou Road stop. She passed a halal butcher, a Dominican hairdresser and a Mexican restaurant in a classically hodgepodge New York neighborhood, where Orthodox Jews in long coats share the sidewalks with Muslim women in head scarves.

Turning the corner, Ms. Vegter walked into a 1956 brick building formally called the Ditmas Educational Complex. It has four minischools, including one for the performing and visual arts, and a mostly black, Latino and Asian student body. Some 97 percent of the students are eligible to receive free lunches. Fliers in eight languages are posted in the vestibule.

In the afternoon she stood before the 650-750 band class, as the class for more promising sixth and seventh graders is known.

“Today we have Ms. Vegter,” Ms. McDevitt said. “She’s from Carnegie Hall.” She asked Ms. Vegter to demonstrate her instrument.

“I’m going to play something by Mozart,” Ms. Vegter said. “I’m sure you’ve already heard of him.”

Swaying slightly with her eyes closed, she played the opening notes of Mozart’s Fourth Horn Concerto. Her burnished sound filled the basement room, where a heavily scratched upright piano with a half dozen black keys broken off stood against a wall. A bass drum rattled slightly.

The children sat facing their black music stands, some of them staring at her. She stopped and smiled to sluggish applause.

“I actually do this for a living,” she said, pulling a card out of her sleeve: she had recently played in the backup band for Kanye West at the BET Hip-Hop Awards. That drew a stirring of smiles and “Wows.”

The questions began pouring out. Did she tour with other famous musicians? Was she famous? Were her parents musicians? How old was she? Did she want to travel as a child?

“How long do you plan to play?” asked Armani Kingsberry, a sharp-eyed boy with braids assigned to the snare drum.

“I guess for my whole life,” Ms. Vegter said. “I can’t really imagine my life without it.”

After class she described her fears: “I really want to make an impact in the classroom, just as I do other things well. The scariest part is that I may not make a difference.” The contrast with her upbringing was driven home. “I hate to think there are people who don’t sleep on beds,” Ms. Vegter said.

AT SCHOOL, MS. VEGTER WORKED to have her students produce the most rudimentary of sounds. Outside, she was near the highest technical level of her profession.

In November she performed with other fellows at Weill Recital Hall as part of an academy concert series, a perk of the program. She played one of the horn’s most challenging chamber works, the Ligeti Horn Trio, with violin and piano, which had never been played at Carnegie. The piece requires extraordinary agility, the ability to play with exquisite softness both high and low (especially tough on the horn) and a mastery of complex rhythms. Ms. Vegter had practiced so hard that there was a cut inside her lower lip.

She said she felt a divide between the worlds of Ditmas and Ligeti but also knew that one allowed the other to happen, because of the fellowship.

The sizable audience included many fellows. Ms. Vegter’s father, Thomas Vegter, was there too, with three other couples from Chicago. She came onstage in a sleeveless black top and black slacks, businesslike as ever.

When playing she kept the slender fingers of her left hand, which control the valves, high in the air. Her brow furrowed; her eyebrows jumped with the notes; her tone vibrated slightly. She responded to the applause with two stiff bows. She came out into the audience and greeted her father, a tall man with a rugged face, with a quiet “Hi, Dad.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Mr. Vegter said. “I was almost crying.”

EARLY IN THE TERM Ms. Vegter’s classroom work seemed to bear little relationship to the sophisticated training offered by the academy. She was struggling just to remember names, tapping out beats, unsticking trumpet valves, showing what valve to press.

She was struggling against frustration too. “It’s not going to happen overnight,” she said. “I only spend so much time there, so I can’t really expect a ton.” Kenny, who had shown flashes of talent, had been out for a week. For the first time she found herself disciplining disobedient children.

In November her teaching grew more sophisticated. She had the trumpeters finger their notes silently. Then they played in a cacophonic unison. “I want to hear the front of the notes,” she said. “We want to make sure the notes have bodies. Not only fronts but bodies.” And later: “Connect your stomach to the front of your mouth.”

Outside school, there had been a big development: Ms. Vegter’s fiancé, Ben Gartrell, a doctor awaiting his residency assignment, had proposed after a nerve-rackingly long dinner. She said yes.

THE TIME HAD ARRIVED for the 650-750 band to perform, at the Christmas concert. It was a cold, sleety evening in mid-December. The kids wore black pants and white tops. Bryan Sanchez, a trumpeter and one of the group’s best performers, had a crisply ironed white shirt.

In a classroom before the concert, band members warmed up, practiced and goofed around, trying one another’s instruments. Five of the 16 members were absent. Some of the kids were worried the other students would make fun of them.

“Don’t get nervous,” Ms. McDevitt said. “Do what you have to do.”

With Ms. Vegter and the visiting Dr. Gartrell in the back, the curtain opened slowly. Ms. McDevitt walked onstage and conducted “Hot Cross Buns,” with a bass drum thumping. After lukewarm applause, the curtain closed. When the players went to sit in the back of the theater, they wore big smiles of relief.

BACK AT DITMAS after the Christmas break Ms. Vegter picked up her work with Gary Zeng, a tiny sixth grader not much bigger than his chosen instrument, the tuba. Before class one day she tried to coax out a note. No luck. She had Gary sing it, then asked him match his voice to her trumpet. “Yeah!” she said when he finally did it. Then she tried to have him play the note on his tuba. Nothing doing.

“You can only say something in so many ways, and then you run out of ways,” she said later.

The members of the 650-750 band drifted in and settled in their seats, including Usman Ali, with his familiar spider-web-patterned jacket, sitting next to Bryan, his fellow trumpeter. Bryan’s grandmother, Sara Esperanza Ramirez, who cares for him, had given him a blue trumpet purchased on eBay for Christmas so he would not have to risk having the school instrument stolen on the way home from school. “It’s a little dangerous,” she said.

Playing “Bring On da Band,” the group showed improvement. It was still plodding along, with notes not always coming out and intonation approximate, but there were real lines of music.

As thunder rumbled, a tired-looking Ms. Vegter sat on the end of the trumpet row and said little. She still wasn’t sure whether she was helping. She also had doubts about ambitions to develop musicians in city schools. “It’s unrealistic,” she said. What can work for the students is to “make their lives a little bit better through music.”

But little things made her feel appreciated: Gary Zeng’s continuing lunchtime visits, the occasional smile at her in the hallway, a growing connection to the students. “I can tell you one personal thing about every one,” she said.

MS. VEGTER HAD BEEN WAITING for the chance to take some kids to her house, Carnegie Hall. Few had heard classical music of any sort, much less been there.

Their young Brooklyn eyes took in the gold leaf and shimmering lights, shyly but intently. They clapped softly, following the audience’s lead, as the concertmaster made his ritual walk through the ranks of musicians, took the A from the oboe and tuned the orchestra.

The field trip had not started spectacularly. Ms. Vegter had obtained 16 tickets from Carnegie. But only four children showed up for the trip at Ditmas. Kenny Ocean had shown up too early and left.

At least this was better than a field trip to the Apollo Theater in Harlem last fall to hear an orchestra. Then, late buses caused the students to miss all but 10 minutes of the concert and kept them waiting 90 minutes to go home.

On this Sunday in January, the performance was a young people’s concert by the Fort Worth Symphony featuring “Peter and the Wolf,” with John Lithgow as the narrator. Ms. Vegter showed a sense of proprietary pride.

“I think that’s Julie, one of my friends’ mother, who plays flute in the orchestra,” she told one student, Samantha Rhodes. To another, Jonathan Saint Surin, she said: “This orchestra is from Texas. They came all the way here to play.”

Gary, the tiny tuba player, kept his coat on and leaned precipitously over the railing to watch.

The orchestra plunged into Reznicek’s “Donna Diana” Overture. Jonathan, wearing an oversize white shirt, kept his hands clasped. Samantha, in white stockings and high heels, held her program, thumbs on top. In “Peter” Samantha tapped her forefinger on the program when the flute came in. Gary leaned forward when the wolf theme reared ominously.

Afterward it was off to Starbucks for hot chocolate before the subway ride home.

ALREADY FOUR MONTHS AT THE SCHOOL, Ms. Vegter had never actually played at length for the students. Late in January she arranged for two other academy brass players to join her in a trio performance at an assembly.

Erin Lynch, the dean of students, delivered a stern warning to the auditorium. No talking, no hoods, no gum chewing. “I want you to listen and enjoy,” she barked in a bullhorn voice.

Ms. Vegter talked briefly about the horn — how its coils, if stretched out, would reach 14 feet (a number she improvised) — and played some notes. The next piece came from the Renaissance period, she said. “We’re talking super, super old,” like an “old-school Nintendo compared to a Nintendo Wii.”

Teachers stood on the aisles, scanning the rows for miscreants. Many students sat slumped in their chairs, and the fidgeting grew as the period went on. But Gary and Samantha sat attentively. The trio played music from “Star Wars,” a tango and Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.”

Another batch of students came in for a second round. Ms. Lynch yanked a portable video game player out of the hands of Kelvonne Williams, an eighth grader whose jaw was wired shut. (A fellow student had punched him after a football game.) The corn-rowed Kelvonne, wearing jeans and a dark hoodie, at first looked peeved. But he watched the trio fixedly, his hands clasped in his lap. He let out a broad smile at the “Star Wars” theme.

“It was interesting, the way they played it,” he said of the performance. “I was listening to the melody and stuff.” The best part? “The guy over there, what was he playing? I forget.” It was the trumpet.

MS. VEGTER KEPT UP HER COMMITMENT, going to Ditmas one or two days a week. She and Ms. McDevitt were still disappointed with the progress of Kenny, the tall sixth-grade trumpeter. He continued to lack focus, despite obvious talent.

Steve Garwood, a saxophone player, had been disruptive since Ms. Vegter’s first day, when he took his neighbor’s saxophone crook and refused to give it back, incessantly repeating, “I am a gangsta.” But Ms. Vegter said his behavior improved after she gave him some personal attention. She found him crying one day. Steve, who wears a stud earring, said he was terrified of punishment at home for getting into a fight. Ms. Vegter asked an administrator to intervene. “He craves something to grab onto,” she said.

Armani was flourishing, assuming leadership of the percussion section and perfecting a drumstick twirl. He hated to make mistakes. Omar Butt, a seventh grader, had recently been out with asthma, and his mother had him taken off the clarinet because of the ailment. He now played bells and said he was disappointed. “I like the clarinet,” he said.

Ms. Vegter seemed more at ease, unafraid to be tough. At class on April 1 she did not let a sax student get away with playing less than the full length of the notes. “We have to work on blending,” she told the saxes. “If you hear yourself, it’s too loud.” She chastised one student for making fun of another’s mistake. “What we need is positive encouragement,” she said, later hitting on the idea of having each section applaud an individual player.

Professionally things were going well for Ms. Vegter. She was landing a lot of freelance jobs, with the Symphony in C of Camden, N.J., the Harrisburg Symphony, the Cleveland Chamber Orchestra and the Syracuse Symphony. “Things are fun,” she said.

IN EARLY JUNE Ms. McDevitt’s bands played in the school’s year-end performance. Ms. Vegter sat in with her French horn. The hall was packed with families, mothers nursing babies and grandparents holding bouquets. The most raucous reception was reserved for the dancers.

Ms. McDevitt’s bands played ably, despite a faulty sound system, interrupting school bells and a seventh-grade percussion section that got off track. Kenny failed to show up, as did a half-dozen other players in each band. Kenny said that he was sick, and that his father would not let him come. A steady hum filled the room, and the response paled in comparison with the enthusiasm for the dance numbers.

So Ms. Vegter’s year at Ditmas came to an end. She said she hoped to return next year, for the kids. “They need me,” she said. “They appreciate me.”

But it did not look good. Financing cuts by the city meant there was no money to pay for her position, said Mr. Kevorkian, the principal. “I happen to love the program,” he added. “I thought Alana did a great job, not only for our children but for Meghan.”

He said he still hoped enough money would be restored to bring Ms. Vegter back. Meanwhile she was beginning her new life in New York with Dr. Gartrell, who planned to spend a year working here before his residency. The week after the concert she signed a lease on a one-bedroom apartment on the East Side. Her last academy concert for the year was on June 13.

THE ACADEMY’S administrators learned some lessons: for one, it is not easy finding talented musicians willing to make the teaching commitment. Overall, Juilliard’s president, Joseph W. Polisi, said he was pleased at the connection the fellows had made with the students while keeping the artistic level of the concerts high.

Ms. Vegter, for her part, said she realized that she could never engage in Ms. McDevitt’s grueling career. But she said she learned other lessons as well: how to be more patient, how to communicate better, how important a little focus can be for attention-starved children.

“It’s not just about teaching them the notes,” she said. The need was driven home by a question from a troublesome sixth grader, who asked out of the blue if she was going to leave. “I’m not going anywhere,” she told him.

She acknowledged another surprising result, that “sharing what I love with other people sometimes is more satisfying than playing.” After a concert, she said, the connection with the audience is broken.

“With kids it’s sustained,” she added. “It’s one thing I’m doing in the world that makes me feel like I’m making a difference.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: June 22, 2008
The cover article this weekend about a horn player who helped teach students at Ditmas Junior High School in Brooklyn how to play instruments misstates the percentage by which New York City’s financing cuts reduced the school’s budget. The school lost 1.4 percent of its financing, not 13 percent.