Music Orchard builds and encourages local youths’ musical passions

Music Orchard provides free private music lessons to students in Richmond Public Schools, pairing high school musicians with elementary school students pursuing music.

“It originally started as a way to do community service, but I kinda fell in love with working with these kids,” said Music Orchard founder Jake Zaslav.

According to Zaslav, he founded Music Orchard in 2013 as a way of obtaining the 140 service hours required by Maggie Walker to graduate. He now studies music at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

At its inception, Music Orchard divided 17 students among 9 mentors at William Fox Elementary, later adding Linwood-Holton Elementary and, as of this year, Westover Hills Elementary. When the upcoming season commences in February of 2017 approximately 60 mentees at these schools will receive lessons, opposed to around 50 in the previous year.

In conjunction with the growth Music Orchard has experienced, sporadic growth is also occurring with music education in Richmond Public Schools, and especially in Westover Hills Elementary, according to Managing Director and Maggie Walker senior Ellie Kim.

“Now it’s nice because we have kind of a network with the principals and so they’re always so willing to help us reach out to other principals and to let them know how successful the program has been at their own schools,” Kim said.

Zaslav said private lessons made an impact in his own career as a trumpet player, that many students don’t reach their potential because they can’t afford tutoring.

“I noticed that there were all these great kids who fell through the cracks,” Zaslav said. “I wanted to find a way to stop that from happening and have these kids remember how great music is.”

Students in the Music Orchard program have confirmed Zaslav’s belief in the importance of one-on-one attention in music education. Upon asking a student if he were to continue band, Zaslav said he received the following response:

“Yeah, last year, or at the beginning of the year I was thinking of quitting trumpet,” the student said. “But after taking lessons with Music Orchard I want to continue playing.”

Often, once students move out of the fourth and fifth grade age range that Music Orchard covers, Kim said their musical futures are dependent on the programs available within the schools they attend. However, as Kim explained, occasionally the relationship between mentor and student continues on.

“I’ve seen (that) some mentors are just so passionate and have formed such good relationships with their students that they just continue to teach them for free,” Kim said. “It’s just so much fun and you have someone that you can share your instrument with.”

In addition, Kim said that working with students through Music Orchard has increased her own appreciation for music.

“Starting to work with Music Orchard, I realized that passion isn’t an individual thing,” Kim said. “You get so much out of it from sharing it with other people. So being able to share that love for violin in me completely reshingled it for me.

Zaslav said the goal of Music Orchard isn’t to make kids better musicians, as the volunteers are not professional teachers.

“A lot of high school kids don’t have specific teaching training, but what we can do is express our love of music to these kids and share with them this love of music,” Zaslav said. “It was incredible to hear someone say exactly why we started this program, to hear someone articulate that so well, who had never been told that’s why we do it.”

As a next step for Music Orchard, Zaslav said he is in the process of turning the group into a 501 (c) (3), which will make it easier to receive additional funding.

“I realized that there’s a couple of things that are really important,” Zaslav said. “You need to be able to get access to funds, you need to be able have an independent bank account team to be able to pay for some of the expenses the mentors use. We have a fund so that they can buy instruments for their students.”

Zaslav said Music Orchard is need of more mentors to accommodate its ever-growing number of students. No audition is required.

Prospective mentors can apply online at musicorchard.org/apply

Georgia Geen, Contributing Writer