Year end concert - with an eye to next year

 Saturday was our year end concert. Fifty or so parents, and about 15 students. It was the perfect end to a delightful, meaningful and fruitful year.

This year we had more than just violin. Mark taught a ukelele class, and at the concert his kids played songs in Togalog and Tigrinyi as well as Hebrew. Parents and kids joined in. Avigail and Avigail (two girls, same name) played a Bach minuet. Noah played "The Storm". The first year students played Pop Goes the Weasel, the Angry song, and the Hiccup song. The whole crowd hiccuped away at strategic moments. 

This year we added guitar and piano, taught by Eden and Shiraz, two volunteers from the Rimon school of Jazz. They began teaching only toward the end of the year, and their students didn't feel ready to go up on the stage. Next year!

Now starts the work of signing up kids for continued lessons at the municipal conservatory. This school year we had seven students in the conservatory. I expect that we will have an additional 10 students starting in September. I will keep you posted.

As a means of recruiting conservatory students, our program at Elifelet is by far the most effective in the country. About 70 percent of our first year students want to continue their studies. I think the reason for that is that, for our students, violin is much more than just a neat hobby. It is a way to respect, to self-esteem, and an oasis of peace and joy in a hostile world. 

Respect and self-esteem are indeed one of our main goals in the program. But they are not our only goals. Another objective is to get our children out of the closed neighborhood that is almost their entire life. Many of my students have rarely if ever ventured beyond Har Tsiyon street, the border of the Shapira neighborhood. The weekly trip to the conservatory is a life-opening experience. 

And, ultimately, my dream is to see these children making music with other children - children from the neighborhood, and from beyond the neighborhood. To see them playing in a community orchestra, with Black, White and Yellow, kippa Sruga (religious) and secular, Jewish and Arab, sharing their music together.

I am still far from that goal. But I am optimistic that in September we will take the first steps to achieving it.