This Friday is the Junior Bach concert at Peabody. I haven’t written about the program in a while, but getting Junior Bach up an running is one of my proudest accomplishments. This is a Peabody magazine article about the program, and this video celebrating Peabody’s 150th anniversary describes the program as well.
In it, Peabody composition students teach lessons to middle school students at the St. Ignatius Loyola Academy, located near Peabody. The students usually have no formal background in music, but after the semester’s lessons there is a concert at Peabody, where Peabody musicians perform their compositions for their peers and the Peabody community. One student a year even wins a scholarship to Peabody for a year of lessons.
It’s really a simple program, and one designed to give conservatory students maximum impact on the lives of the students they teach given the resources they have. Stephen Stone runs it now, and has made a couple great improvements to the program, including holding the final concert during the day at Peabody instead of in the evening, and making it an assembly for the whole student body of St. Ignatius. I wish I could take the day and go down and see the concert, and see how the program’s doing, see Dr. Stone again, and everyone else at Peabody. If you happen to be free Friday at 3:30 and anywhere near Peabody, head over to Goodwin Hall and hear what the students wrote this semester.