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Juilliard Curtails Program That Serves Poor Children
One has to wonder how much is being spent for standardized test prep and administration at these children's "regular" schools.
By Daniel J. Wakin
The Juilliard School’s music-training program for poor minority schoolchildren — a rigorous curriculum that the conservatory holds up as a national model — has been slashed, disappointing dozens of children preparing to audition.
The Music Advancement Program will take back about 50 children in the fall to finish the second year of their two-year course. But it has canceled auditions next month for the incoming class, said Joseph W. Polisi, Juilliard’s president. About 50 are admitted each year.
Mr. Polisi said that the school could not raise the $400,000 necessary to finance the whole program, and that across-the-board budget cuts meant there was no money elsewhere for it. “I was the guy who started it 20 years ago, and I believe deeply in it,” Mr. Polisi said. “It’s an extremely important part of me and Juilliard.” But the likelihood of raising enough money was “exceedingly low,” he said. Mr. Polisi said he hoped to raise money to restart the program, on a smaller scale, in two years.
“It’s like cutting down the bush, but it’s going to bloom with fresh growth in a few years,” he said. “It’s not going out of business by any stretch.”
Cultural institutions have been shrinking budgets left and right, and the program’s reduction showed that even classical music programs for the poor are not immune. Orchestras, conservatories, opera companies and other music institutions point with particular pride at their efforts in this area. The Musical Advancement Program is one of 10 outreach programs at Juilliard. The school and Carnegie Hall cut back another project, known as the Academy, a joint effort that places recent conservatory graduates in New York public schools to help teach music.
“It’s really heartbreaking,” Ronen Segev, a professional pianist and Juilliard alumnus, said of the cutback. “It means a lot to these kids.”
Mr. Segev founded Ten O’Clock Classics, an organization that presents concerts in unusual places and provides music education to poor youngsters. Ten O’Clock Classics serves as a feeder for the Juilliard advancement program, providing violin lessons at Mount Carmel-Holy Rosary elementary school in East Harlem.
“It was just pretty shocking for us,” Mr. Segev said, adding that he is a Juilliard supporter, but that he fears the program will not return. “These kids who have been preparing for auditions are just left out in the cold.”
Juilliard has held out the Music Advancement Program as a prototype for other conservatories in how to bring musical training to children who would not normally have access.
Like the legions of paying students in Juilliard’s precollege division, the program’s participants stay at Juilliard from 8 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. on Saturdays and take individual lessons and classes in ear training, theory and performance. Instruments are provided for those who can’t afford them. Most students pay no tuition. The program is open to students in Grades 3 through 8.
Four Mount Carmel students made it into the program last year. “That is a fantastic thing,” said Suzanne Kaszynski, the principal of the 270-student Mount Carmel. Several seventh graders intent on auditioning were particularly upset because they would be too old for any future auditions.
Jeffrey Wang, the violin teacher at the elementary school, who is paid partly by Ten O’Clock Classics, said he struggled to explain to his students the financial issues behind why their opportunity to audition this year had evaporated.
“I don’t know if they understood the full scope,” he said. “It’s like a badge of honor to be able to audition for something that has the name Juilliard on it.”
The students had been working hard on a Gavotte from Book 1 of the Suzuki violin method for the Juilliard judges. Mr. Wang said their efforts would not go to waste.
“We’ll still play it at the spring concert,” he said.
— Daniel J. Wakin
New York Times
2009-04-07
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