Lang Lang is creating 369 piano players for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.
The world-renowned pianist’s foundation gifted 51 keyboards to three Cleveland schools last year as part of his national Keys of Inspiration program.
At Mary M. Bethune School on the city’s East Side, music teacher Amy Ledford said she’s already seeing a difference in her students.
“When they talk about the instruments’ families, sometimes we do some written work, we listen to the orchestra – that doesn’t make a connection with our kids,” she said, adding that it is the "hands-on" playing of an instrument "that will totally open up the light in their head.”
Ledford has built up band, choir and other music programs during her 30 years with CMSD. The district also offers recorders and ukuleles as a gateway toward reading music. Yet the chance to visit a classroom full of pianos is unprecedented, according to Jeffery Allen, the district’s director of fine arts.
“When a child is given permission to touch the instrument and play the instrument, that is truly life changing,” he said.
Ms. Ledford’s room is a former computer lab, but the QWERTY keyboards have been replaced with the electric kind that sit on pedestals and make music. Arranged neatly in rows of three, each one has two pairs of headphones so students can hear themselves practice. Cleveland’s Dike School of the Arts and Newton D. Baker School of the Arts, as well as 15 school districts nationwide, have similar arrangements. Each one costs the Lang Lang International Music Foundation about $50,000.
The foundation brought the project to Cleveland due to the city’s rich history of supporting classical music, said CEO Lukas Barwinski-Brown, a long-time friend of Lang Lang. A prior partnership with the Cleveland Institute of Music was followed by an invitation for Lang Lang to perform at Cuyahoga Community College last year. The show, which was part concert and part master class for young players, ended with the announcement that the pianos on stage would be donated to CMSD.
“I'm always saying that music education is not a hobby,” Barwinski-Brown said. “The neuroscientists … prove that the kids exposed to the music education at a young age, they are better in math and reading.”
While kids can do their homework at home - or play their recorder or ukulele - it’s not always easy to find a piano.
“That’s the unfortunate part: Not one child has said they have a keyboard,” Ledford said. “I’ve offered to show them how to get to a virtual keyboard, but, of course, those are delayed so that doesn’t really work. Hopefully, if the parents see that it’s exciting, they’ll get them a keyboard down the road.”
