Every concert season at the Ravinia music venue in Highland Park, musicians grace the open-air and indoor stages to perform for thousands of listeners.
This summer, a 20-year-old graduate of Catalyst Circle Rock in Austin led a number on the Ravinia stage in front of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The young adult was part of Sistema Ravinia at Catalyst, a program that launched at the school in 2012 to provide free after-school orchestra classes to students.
“We want to make all forms of music more accessible and inclusive, and orchestral music especially needs that,” Christine Taylor Conda, Ravinia’s executive director of education and community engagement, told Austin Weekly News. “It is possible for those students, if they want to, to play at a high level in an orchestra and to own it and to feel a sense of accomplishment with that music.”
Today, Ravinia offers free use of instruments and instruction to 117 students at Catalyst Circle Rock charter school and George Rogers Clark Elementary School in Austin and, in North Lawndale, Frazier International Magnet School and Gregory Elementary School.
“I never knew anyone in Austin to play a string instrument that was my age,” said Shemeka Nash, artistic manager at Sistema Ravinia Austin and Lawndale, about growing up in Austin. Now, in four West Side schools, Nash develops curriculum and teaches Sistema Ravinia’s after-school programs.
In Sistema Ravinia, students from third or fourth grade (depending on the school) through eighth grade meet an average of two hours a day, three days a week. Professional musicians teach anyone who wants to learn how to play instruments through studio classes and small ensemble performances, or those with just string, wind or percussion instruments.
Nash said she aims “to make sure that the students have high standards to reach for and knowing that it doesn’t matter that it’s Austin and that the crime rate is high, and there’s a ton of different reasons that people will say, ‘These children can’t do this, or these children can’t learn this.’”
Sistema Ravinia is about showing students “what they can do, what they can achieve, what they should have access to, and what they should feel is for them too,” Taylor Conda added.
Older students have the opportunity to play in a full orchestra through West Side Wednesday. Every Wednesday, Ravinia busses over 100 students from Catalyst Circle Rock, George Rogers Clark Elementary, Frazier and Gregory Elementary to Kehrein Center for the Arts for a collective orchestral performance.
“It’s another example of a place where students can see other students who are like them — making music, playing an instrument, committing to the process,” said Alex Rodriguez, program manager of Sistema Ravinia Austin. “You start to see these really beautiful friendships form and develop from all of these different school sites and the community that gets created as a result … There’s nothing more beautiful than being surrounded by other young people who love the things that you love.”
The path to Sistema Ravinia
In the 1990s, Ravinia started its jazz mentors program in Chicago schools. Through the program, professional jazz musicians travel to local high schools to put on clinics and workshops. Annually, they audition students for the Ravinia Jazz Scholars honors ensemble, which gets intensive training and performance opportunities.
Nash was a part of Ravinia’s jazz mentors program, which showed her what was possible when it came to learning new kinds of music.
“Had I not felt encouraged to play jazz,” Nash said, “I don’t think I would’ve done it.” But now she has the opportunity to teach children about the history of jazz and help them feel connected to it. For example, Nash taught Frank Morrison, an up-and-coming drummer who came out of Ravinia’s jazz mentor program at Morgan Park High School.
From the jazz mentors program, Ravinia started a music discovery program for kindergarteners through third graders whose schools lacked music programs. In this program, teaching artists work alongside classroom teachers on a musically integrated unit.
And in 1998, Ravinia opened the Ravinia Lawndale Family Music School, where children and adults can take free music classes. But Ravinia staff still had the goal of getting music programming inside more schools.
“We wanted to expand the footprint of what we were doing so that we could reach more kids,” Taylor Conda said.
After Catalyst Circle Rock charter school opened in Austin in 2007, Ravinia launched its music discovery program inside the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade school two years later. And in 2012, Catalyst Circle Rock became the first school to be a part of Ravinia’s El Sistema-inspired program — a music education model from Venezuela that highlights social development and community building, especially for those living in disadvantaged areas.
“Equity and musical excellence are at the forefront,” Taylor Conda said of the model. “But also, we want to be a part of the community, we’re interested in developing the whole child and their social, emotional learning. We care for the families. We care about them and want to include them.”
Taylor Conda said students from Sistema Ravinia and Catalyst Circle Rock are in the Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative, which develops orchestral students from underrepresented backgrounds. Through Sistema Ravinia, some students have been able to attend fine arts camps, some have gotten full scholarships to universities, and others have attended conservatories. Ravinia’s goal is to continue supporting these students even after they’ve left their programming.
“We are able to build, nourish and maintain relationships with our students, families and our school partners,” Rodriguez said of what Ravinia calls a “circle of care” around a child. “The way we approach a child’s development, it’s not just their musical learning, but it’s the development of them as a whole person.”
“How can we best set them up, prepare them for, help them create relationships with, or make them aware of some additional opportunities that they have because they play an instrument?” Rodriguez added. “Because our students are musicians, they have way more options for high school than just their neighborhood high school.”
Taylor Conda said those opportunities don’t stop after high school, though.
“Anything that they want to do musically is possible. We’re trying to break down any barriers that would prevent them from progressing as much as they want to. And we want them to know that the stage of the Kehrein Center and the stages at Ravinia are for them too,” Taylor Conda said.
“I want the Austin community to know that there’s a youth orchestra at the Kehrein Center,” Nash added, “and for people to invite us to perform more often.”
Sistema Ravinia has a winter concert on Dec. 9 at 5 p.m. at the Kehrein Center for the Arts, 5628 W Washington Blvd.
