Merit School of Music in the Community with Bridges: Partners in Music

With generous support by the Fidelity FutureStage program, we are now entering our second year of partnership with Hirsch Metro High School in the Grand Crossing community.  Through the FutureStage program, Fidelity invests in the potential of high school students who will someday take center stage in our society.  Arts education is the vehicle for this process and Fidelity currently sponsors programs in Boston, Chicago, Houston and Los Angeles for music and in New York City for theater.  The Chicago program began last winter and Merit, along with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, is extremely pleased to be working with Fidelity to deliver support to the instrumental music programs at Hirsch as well as at Kelly High School in Brighton Park.

Hirsch has a thriving band program led by Barbara Burlingame who is in her ninth year of teaching at Hirsch.  Merit faculty members Doug Brush (percussion) and Anna Najoom (woodwinds) visit Hirsch weekly to work with students both individually and in small groups.  Anna told me that one of her biggest goals in working with the students is to develop confidence in their ability to master their instruments.  With constant reminders of the need for time, repetition and perseverance, she teaches them a variety of practice strategies to help them learn complicated passages.  Last year, she helped several students to prepare for college auditions and this year her time at Hirsch has also included coaching some saxophone students on jazz and blues skills.

Doug Brush works with three different groups of percussion students.  Their time with Doug is divided between learning the basic vocabulary elements of snare drum playing and developing their music reading skills.

On December 5th, it was time for a party to celebrate all of the hard work and musical growth that the Hirsch students have achieved over the past year.  Representatives from Fidelity, CSO and Merit joined the band to mingle, hear good music and eat pizza!  Following remarks by Hirsch principal Dr. Joyce Cooper and each of the guests, the students got to hear and talk with violinist Austin Wulliman from the Civic Orchestra, the CSO’s training orchestra for young professionals.  Then it was our turn to enjoy listening to the Hirsch students perform.  The percussion students showed off their accomplishments followed by a tenor sax duo that performed “Little Drummer Boy”.  Then the full band concluded the mini-concert with “African Noel”.  Above you will see the exuberant group photo shot in front of Fidelity’s banner and the FutureStage signature panel showcasing the names of CSO patrons who support music education.  You can’t make it out too well in this photo, but I can tell you that every square inch was filled!!  This bodes well for the stages that music students stand on both today and in the future.