An Orchestra Adopts a City, One Kid at Time.

When the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra started an after-school music program 10 years ago, it had 30 students. Now it has 1,300 — and counting.

'From the outside, Lockerman-Bundy Elementary School looks forbidding, a tan monolith built in the 1970s. Some of the rowhouses across the street are boarded up — reminders of the cycles of poverty and abandonment this city has struggled with for years.

Inside on an afternoon last month, though, it was a different story. Music echoed through brightly colored halls lined with murals. Classes were over, but school was not out: Young string players rehearsed Beethoven in one classroom, while flutists practiced in another and brass players worked on fanfares in a third. Also on offer were homework tutors, an after-school snack and dinner.

“Four measures for nothing,” Wade Davis, a cello teacher, called out to his young string section, launching them into Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” Standing outside the classroom, Carol Moore wiped away tears as she peered through the doorway at her son, Jayden, 11, who was playing viola.

“I’m so proud of all of them,” she said.

It was just another afternoon at OrchKids, the free after-school program that the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and its music director, Marin Alsop, started a decade ago with just 30 children in a single school. The program now reaches 1,300 students in six schools; its participants have gone on to win scholarships to prestigious summer music programs; play with famous musicians, including the cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis; perform at halftime at a Baltimore Ravens game; and win accolades at the White House.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/arts/music/baltimore-symphony-orchkids.html?