Alicia Keyes, a Grammy-award winning pop artist, started her music career right the Conservatory of Music in Brooklyn. Also, composer and Pulitzer Prize-winner John Musto, Miles Faye (Village People singer), and Kathleen Hurley (Dora the Explorer’s voice) began here.
The professional destinies of Danny Mixon (Hank Crawford’s pianist, Armelia McQueen (Broadway star), and Emerson Buckley (director of the Madison Square Garden concerts of Luciano Pavarotti) were also shaped at this top-quality educational institution. Brooklyn Conservatory of Music is an over 120-year-old music academy that’s housed in an entirely restored, 5-story, Victorian Gothic mansion right in the historic heart of Park Slope.
A visit there — on any day, evening, or weekend — is literally music to the ears. Stand in the lobby, and one minute you hear the soothing, solitary strains of a lone instrument. The next, it’s the sound of rambunctious 2-year-olds warbling away with their parents.
Wait some more, and you might catch seniors rehearsing Bob Marley tunes for an upcoming concert. You might even catch a show featuring an award-winning jazz artist — Grammy winners Arturo O’Farrill, Dave Valentin, Wallace Roney, and Taj Mahal have all performed there.
It’s all in the service of making music, according to Executive Director Karen Geer, whose academy is one of the nation’s oldest and largest community music schools, serving more than 6,000 students of all sorts of ages, skill levels, and backgrounds with programs ranging from Teen Jazz, Beginning Songwriting, and Chamber Ensembles to The Art of Improvisation, Vocal Technique, and even Yoga for Musicians.
“The depth and breadth of our programs cannot be matched in Brooklyn,” says Geer, whose organization targets schools, Head Start programs, senior centers, libraries, and museums.
“We are everywhere, serving anyone and everyone,” adds Geer, whose major asset remains an impressive faculty composed of prominent performers, composers, musicologists, and theorists, many of them holding advanced degrees from the world’s top conservatories and universities, while maintaining active and prestigious performing careers.
Kate Richards-Geller, a music therapist at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, has witnessed the healing power of a sweet tune. She has also seen it move mountains. In the fall of 2006, she began musical therapy sessions with a boy named Oluyemi, who was born with Down’s syndrome.
She watched in wonder as Oluyemi made a beeline for the djembe drum, piano, guitar, and jingle bells, which he fastened to his ankles, rejoicing over their silvery jangle. Soon, the budding musician was playing with enthusiasm, flair, and a posture that attuned itself correctly to each instrument.
Oluyemi’s mother sings the organization’s praises for giving her son a voice. “His foundation of self is stronger,” she says. “Music helps him feel good about himself.” The untold numbers of aspiring musicians — from 18 months to adults — who comprise the conservatory’s illustrious alumni have replicated Oluyemi’s uplifting experience.
Onsite and outreach students have gone on to study at prestigious preparatory programs or specialized high schools, including the Juilliard Preparatory Division, the Mannes School
of Music Preparatory Division, the Middle School Jazz Academy at Lincoln Center, and La
Guardia High School of Music, Art, and Performing Arts.
Others have launched professional music performance or teaching careers, or become directors of music programs, arts organizations, and arts councils. Pint-sized student Shiloh Gonsky, 8, was so inspired by her Suzuki Guitar group that she practiced 870 days in a row, mastering such classics as Paganini’s Waltz from Sonata no. 9, and earning herself an honorable mention in Gary Marcus’s acclaimed book, “Guitar Zero.”
The academy’s gift to Brooklyn and beyond remains irrefutable — music just makes life better. “Even in grief and suffering, the fact that music has an impact is just remarkable and exhilaratingly hopeful,” remarks Richards-Geller.
Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, 58 Seventh Avenue, Phone: 718-622–3300