Young Musicians Blossom In Baltimore's OrchKids Program

Asia Palmer, now a high-school freshman at the Baltimore School for the Arts, has been with the OrchKids program since it began in 2008.

Photo: Ned Wharton

For students in the program, "music becomes this vehicle for experiencing and envisioning themselves with lives filled with possibility," says Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop

April 2, 20165:21 AM ET

NPR Staff

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra celebrated its 100th birthday earlier this year. In a performance of Ravel's Boléro, the orchestra presented a few members of a new generation of players eager to take the music into a new century. They were members of the BSO's OrchKids program, onstage at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall to play right alongside regular orchestra musicians.

Marin Alsop is a regular commentator on NPR; she's also the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and a founding director of OrchKids. The program was launched in 2008 with just 30 children from inner-city backgrounds. Now, there are more than a thousand students in the program.

But the maestra says playing music professionally is not the goal of OrchKids.


"That will just be sort of a fringe benefit," she says. "That's not the point. I think the point is that music becomes this vehicle for experiencing and envisioning themselves with lives filled with possibility. When you walk into Lockerman Bundy [Elementary School] and you hear these kids, and you meet them — I mean, it's all about possibility."

read more: http://www.npr.org/2016/04/02/472585005/young-musicians-blossom-in-baltimores-orchkids-program