90 backers pledged a total of $6,995 to send our students & teachers to camp. Thanks everyone!
|
Jazz Violin "The Detroit Way"Monday, June 19 at 5:30 PM - 9:30 PM
N'Namdi Center For Contemporary Art 52 E Forest Ave, Detroit, Michigan 48201  Small nonprofits find ways to connect with big foundations
At the September Catapult pitch event sponsored by the Community Foundation, a little girl came up carrying her violin. She learned to play it through Detroit Youth Volume, one of a dozen charities seeking support. Her playing was memorable and showed impact, Jones said. Despite her lovely piece, three other organizations were chosen for coaching and financial support: Atlantic Impact, Detroit Horse Power and Trans Sistas of Color Project, a tangible reminder of just how competitive seeking foundation support really is. http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20161023/NEWS/161029941/small-nonprofits-find-ways-to-connect-with-big-foundations#utm_medium=email&utm_source=cdb-michmorning&utm_campaign=cdb-michmorning-20161025 “It is necessary to be concerned about the importance of educating a really beautiful human spirit” ~ Dr. Suzuki
--------------------------------- You are invited to DYV's Hip Hop Violin Album promo at Third Man Records (FREE) Presenting work from Detroit Youth Volume's upcoming hip hop violin album to be released in August, youth ages 3-17 will perform classical Suzuki violin school repertoire with live hip hop beats by Sterling Toles. The advanced DYV students have composed original 5-part harmonies for 9 stringed instruments. They will perform Ashley's Song, Dante's Song &Kelsey's Song publicly first time at this event. https://www.facebook.com/events/621867594629089/ Album pre-sales available at the event and onwww.store.alliedmedia.org --------------------------------- DYV hip hop violin album UPDATE Our Creative Production Consultant Tunde Olaniran & Sterling Toles are working on 5 tracks featuring contributions from local artists, hip hop beats and Suzuki violin school standards. August date and location of release party is almost set! We are also in conversation with theTeen Council at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) about collaboratively creating our album art! Students costumes are in the works. With the help of fashion geniuses Tunde Olaniran andRandal Jacobs, the white prom & wedding dresses they are using for material will become beautiful creations, each one made especially to fit each individual student. Watch a video of harmonies here that the older youth will contribute to the album this summer. All recording sessions will be done at Assemble Sound, a space that convenes around the belief that collaboration and cooperation can be a foundation of success for Detroit musicians and the broader ecosystem we represent. More about our Knight Arts Challenge project Our project celebrates, reflects and furthers what’s happening, and what’s been happening, in the City of Detroit. With a professionally recorded album, we will show the world how we've integrated internationally-loved Suzuki violin repertoire into our own Detroit jams. Over 20 youth, ages six to eighteen, from Capuchin Soup Kitchen receiving free violin lessons through DYV will record, produce and publicly perform our album in August 2016. Follow the process, JOIN OUR ALBUM PROJECT FB EVENT PAGE --------------------------------- 2016 Spring Solo Recital Recap Dean Dauphinais from Huffington Post blogged about it! "As the kids took their turns in the spotlight, performing such songs as “Happy Farmer,” “Go Tell Aunt Rhody,” and variations on “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” it was impossible not to see—and hear—the pride and joy they were feeling. After all, they had been practicing hard since October for this very moment. One by one they played their hearts out, then took a bow as the appreciative crowd bathed them in applause. It was such a wonderful thing to witness." Thanks to our volunteer piano accompanists Cecilia Abundis (student Madeleine's mom) and Neal Harris (one of our teachers Jeff Harris' dad). Watch a video of one of the performances here! PERFORMANCE CALENDAR --------------------------------- Needs for Detroit Youth Volume's summer plans
DONATE A SCHOLARSHIP To supplement grants, we rely on a base of friends and community members to support the organization. All donations are tax deductible. $750 pays for 25 weeks of Private Lessons and Group Classes for one child. This breaks down to $62.50 per month for 1 year, which you can auto-give monthly as a Sustaining Donor. You may request to be paired with a specific child after reading the student biographies. We use grants and in-kind donations to cover everything else needed to make Suzuki violin accessible to our students:
Call for support from artists & musicians of color In effort to nurture positive self identity andcultural critical consciousness in our students, Detroit Youth Volume is always looking for artists and musicians of color to visit Detroit Youth Volume. We would love to have you provide a special workshop, play an inspirational piece or two for the youth and tell the youth about your journey. Interested? Send us an email! --------------------------------- Dreams of expansion and a permanent home
One of the things we need in order to expand (in #s of students, teachers and instruments), is our own building in which a handful of classrooms are available every day of the week for private lessons and group classes. We also need a kitchen in order to continue our healthy snack program. An area to use as small auditorium would not hurt. Perhaps if the perfect building is out there (maybe owned by the Detroit Land Bank Authority?) DYV could make our dream real by securing funding from Art Place, Knight Cities and other investors. If you have ideas about space, funding or expansion, please email [email protected] By Dean Dauphinais
Last week my wife and I had the rare pleasure of attending concerts on consecutive nights. The first one involved one of the biggest names in rock and roll. The second one involved 19 kids you’ve never heard of. Which one do you think we enjoyed more? On Thursday, we decided on the spur of the moment to go online and buy a pair of incredibly cheap tickets for the Bruce Springsteen show at the Palace of Auburn Hills in metropolitan Detroit. We figured anytime you can see “The Boss” live for only $17 a ticket, you have to jump at the chance. So we did. And we had a fabulous time. But the best was yet to come. The next night, we made our way to St. Charles Borromeo Church on Detroit’s east side. The concert happening there was much smaller in scale, and nobody was selling tickets for it on StubHub. But that didn’t stop it from being one of the most fulfilling musical performances we’ve ever seen. The performers my wife and I watched and listened to last Friday night were the kids of Detroit Youth Volume (DYV), an amazing organization that teaches disadvantaged kids from the city of Detroit how to play the violin using the Suzuki Method—for free. On this night, the group held its annual Solo Recital, and 19 of its 21 current members participated. As the kids took their turns in the spotlight, performing such songs as “Happy Farmer,” “Go Tell Aunt Rhody,” and variations on “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” it was impossible not to see—and hear—the pride and joy they were feeling. After all, they had been practicing hard since October for this very moment. One by one they played their hearts out, then took a bow as the appreciative crowd bathed them in applause. It was such a wonderful thing to witness. (You can watch a video of one of the performances here.) Pairing underprivileged city kids with violins may seem unlikely to some, but not to DYV founder/director Clara Hardie. She told The Detroit News back in December that one of her goals is to “change the face of the Suzuki world.” The “Suzuki Method,” created by Japanese violinist Shinichi Suzuki more than 50 years ago, applies the basic principles of language acquisition to the learning of music. Some of the concepts it employs are parent responsibility, loving encouragement, and constant repetition. “The foundation of the Suzuki Method is that every child can learn,” Hardie toldThe Detroit News. “And in my head I’m thinking ‘regardless of race or class.’” So in 2010, Hardie, a city of Detroit resident, founded Detroit Youth Volume and began teaching kids from Detroit’s Capuchin Soup Kitchen and surrounding neighborhoods. The Suzuki Method requires commitment, not only from the students but from the parents as well. “It’s a bigger commitment for the parents than for the kids,” Hardie says. “They have to come to every class, take notes, and facilitate daily home practice.” Because of this, DYV assists the parents of its students by providing gas cards to help pay for transportation costs. And if parents don’t drive, they can even take advantage of a van service. Detroit Youth Volume’s students get both group and individual lessons from the program’s four teachers, who include Hardie, Jeff Harris, Ashley Nelson, and Scott Murphy. They meet on Monday and Friday afternoons in the basement of the church, where Hardie strives to make learning fun. One way she does that is by having hip-hop artists work with the kids. Adding hip-hop beats to standards like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” creates a fresh new sound. “We’re trying to expose the kids to other artists of color in their own city who are creating social change using music and art,” Hardie explains. “The kids can see themselves in those adults and the adults can see that our kids are really special.” What Detroit Youth Volume is doing for the kids of Detroit is indeed special. By building a positive learning environment, DYV encourages in its students confidence, self-motivation, emotional expression, empathy for others, grit, and mastery. All of those things will help these children succeed going forward, both in music and in life. The culmination of DYV’s collaboration with hip-hop artists will come with the recording of their hip-hop violin album, which has been funded in part by a crowd-sourcing campaign that raised more than $6,000.00 on Kickstarter. The group will give the public a sneak-peak of those sounds when they perform a concert at Jack White’s Third Man Records store in Detroit on Saturday, May 21. You can bet my wife and I will be there. “Music exists for the purpose of growing an admirable heart.” —Dr. Shinichi Suzuki Follow Dean Dauphinais on Twitter: www.twitter.com/deanokat  “First character, then ability." ~ Dr Suzuki
Thank you for loving the only free Suzuki violin program in Detroit, making Suzuki violin accessible to youth from the Capuchin Soup Kitchen and putting our students in musical collaboration with local artists since 2010. You can enjoy more frequent updates from Detroit Youth Volume in the form of photos & videos:
WATCH OUR VIDEO You are invited to DYV's annual solo recital April 15th at the St Charles Borromeo (FREE) Join us at 5:30pm for the recital with piano accompaniment in the beautiful, golden lit sanctuary of the historic St Charles Borromeo. Afterward, enjoy the potluck afterglow in the basement and tour the DYV classrooms. https://www.facebook.com/events/1112367255495479/ DYV began recording our hip hop violin album on March 18th. Joined by our Creative Production Consultant Tunde Olaniran, Jon Zott & Sterling Toles to record three Suzuki standard melodies. The older students are learning to build chords in order to write harmonies for our tracks. Watch a video of their progress here. Featured artists will be add beats, solos and harmonies in the coming months. Email us your ideas at [email protected] About our Knight Arts Challenge project Our project celebrates, reflects and furthers what’s happening, and what’s been happening, in the City of Detroit. With a professionally recorded album, we will show the world how we've integrated internationally-loved Suzuki violin repertoire into our own Detroit jams. Over 20 youth, ages six to eighteen, from Capuchin Soup Kitchen receiving free violin lessons through DYV will record, produce and publicly perform our album in August 2016. Follow the process, JOIN OUR ALBUM PROJECT FB EVENT PAGE DILLA Youth Day was a success! In February at the Charles Wright Museum of African American History, DYV celebrated Detroit's legendary J Dilla, who began playing violin at age 4.on his birthday and the 10th anniversary of his passing. Dilla is known as the Mozart of hip hop. We collaborated w/ beat-maker Sterling Toles during the youth showcase and were even joined by a youth from an urban dance crew! Check out the video here. PERFORMANCE CALENDAR Call for support from artists & musicians of color In effort to nurture positive self identity and cultural critical consciousness in our students, Detroit Youth Volume is always looking for artists and musicians of color to visit a Detroit Youth Volume Group Class on a Monday or Friday night at St Charles Parish. We would love to have you play an inspirational piece or two for the youth and tell them about how you use music to build community and it has effected your life. You are welcome to play along with our Suzuki songs for the rest of the group class as well. Interested? Send us an email! SPONSOR A CHLD'S VIOLIN LESSONS Dreams of expansion and a permanent home
One of the things we need in order to expand (in #s of students, teachers and instruments), is our own building in which a handful of classrooms are available every day of the week for private lessons and group classes. We also need a kitchen in order to continue our healthy snack program. An area to use as small auditorium would not hurt. Perhaps if the perfect building is out there (maybe owned by the Detroit Land Bank Authority?) DYV could make our dream real by securing funding from Art Place, Knight Cities and other investors. If you have ideas about space, funding or expansion, please email [email protected] http://abc10up.com/u-p-woman-connecting-disadvantaged-detroit-youth-to-art-of-violin/
Blog December 20, 2015 12:02 pm DETROIT — Music changes lives, especially in the lives of Michigan’s youth. In Detroit, where most kids are exposed to commercialized music through ear buds and iPods, very few get the opportunity to hold instrument, let alone learn the power of creating music. One Upper Peninsula woman is making strides in Metro Detroit area to change that with a new program called the ‘Detroit Youth Volume’, exposing students to the violin. Read more and watch video from the Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/columnists/donna-terek/2015/12/19/donnas-detroit-suzuki-violin/77643300/ Clara Hardie, who wants to change the stereotype of her ‘Suzuki kids’, started the program five years ago as Detroit’s only free Suzuki violin program for disadvantaged youth. She recruited her students from the Capuchin Soup Kitchen on Detroit’s east side. To lend a hand, go to detroityouthvolume.org for information on donating by check or an automatic digital monthly payment of support. Hardie says a monthly donation of $5 or $10 a month would “really make a difference for us.” POSTED BY ANDREW LORINSER[email protected] Andrew is the interactive media manager at ABC 10 / CW 5. Learn More about ABC 10 / CW 5 Staff 
Donna Terek, The Detroit News11:59 p.m. EST December 19, 2015
Every Monday and Friday afternoon a handful of kids and their parents slip into a side door of St. Charles Boromeo Church on Detroit's east side. The young people carry violin cases and backpacks and soon the church basement is filled with the melodious – most of the time – sounds of violins playing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and “Go Tell Aunt Rhodie.” This is the sound of Detroit Youth Volume, Detroit's only free Suzuki violin program for disadvantaged youth. Clara Hardie, founder of Detroit Youth Volume, wants to change the stereotype of 'Suzuki kids.' Her program gives free violin lessons to kids in inner city Detroit. Although Dr. Shinichi Suzuki, the originator of the Suzuki method, believed every child can learn given a positive learning environment, daily practice and parental support, the typical American "Suzuki kid" is white or Asian and upper-middle-class -- understandable, considering the cost of buying or renting instruments plus books and transportation. But program founder/director Clara Hardie recruited her students from the Capuchin Soup Kitchen on Detroit's east side. These kids really mess with any stereotypes you may have had about inner city youth – and their parents. Hardie is disrupting assumptions about ability, commitment and effort by asking a lot of both kids and adults and having the expectation that they will succeed. The kids get both group and private lessons, and Hardie gets donations of healthy snacks, a real plus when these students get out of school needing some extra fuel to put behind their violins. Their parents get gas cards to help with transporting their budding musicians to class. The program also employs a van service for parents who don't drive. Hardie, a core city neighborhood resident herself, started Detroit Youth Volume five years ago, teaching kids she met at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen's Rosa Parks Children and Youth Program at its Warren/Conner location. Today, the 23 students range in age from 3 to 17 and all are African-American. The four teachers, including Hardie, 31, are pretty young themselves. All have played violin since childhood and Hardie and Scott Murphy both grew up in the Suzuki program. What is the Suzuki method? Hardie tells the oft-repeated story of how Dr. Suzuki, with only one violin, began teaching his neighborhood children to play to counteract the effects of living through World War II in Japan. It's not much of a stretch to say poor kids from the soup kitchen have trauma of their own to deal with and Hardie hopes learning to play violin will give them a sense of accomplishment "and bring joy into their lives." Shinichi Suzuki observed that children learn the complexities of their native language by listening to it being spoken for one or two years and with plenty of reinforcement from their parents and tons of repetition. He reasoned that applying the same method to music education would allow any child to play an instrument. That means parents must be very involved. "It's a bigger commitment for the parents than for the kids," Hardie said. They have to come to every class, take notes and facilitate daily home practice." Children learn language by hearing it spoken around them, so Suzuki students listen to recordings of the pieces they are learning every day. Children speak before they read, so the method requires them to have basic competence with their instrument before they begin learning to read music. Changing the perception of the ‘Suzuki kid’ Hardie aims to "change the face of the Suzuki world" in the U.S. When she attended the North American conference of Suzuki teachers last year, out of the hundreds of attendees, only two were African-American. That's when she realized "I needed to impact the entire Suzuki world." "The foundation of the Suzuki Method is that every child can learn," said Hardie, "and in my head I'm thinking 'regardless of race or class.’" Ashley Ardis, 16, is Detroit Youth Volume's sole violist. The teen is very aware of how playing the instrument sets her apart and confronts societal stereoypes. At a recent performance with Classical Revolution Detroit, the host Rick Robinson held a mic to her lips and asked her why she likes to play. Without hesitation she said, "I don't want to be looked upon as not having skills because of my color." Hardie wants the kids to "learn that if they work hard at something they can do anything," she said. "It's so important for us to set them up for success so they can see a real example of themselves working hard and making progress." When Hardie first met her student Kelsy Dinwiddie, she asked her what she thought she was good at. "She didn't know what to say," Hardie recalled. Asked again four years later, Kelsey had many answers, beginning with "playing violin." "It has helped her feel confident performing in front of a group, so now she's on the dance team at school and using her creativity in other ways." Knight Arts Challenge Grant Early on, Hardie started enlisting hip-hop artists like Sterling Toles and beat boxer Stevie Soul to work with the kids developing beats that can underly the violin performances. It puts a whole new wrinkle in “Twinkle Twinkle.“ "We're trying to expose the kids to other artists of color in their own city who are creating social change using music and art," Hardie said. "The kids can see themselves in those adults and the adults can see that our kids are really special." This year the program received a $22,000 Knight Arts Challenge award to create a hip-hop violin recording featuring Detroit Youth Volume musicians performing classical pieces over the beats of three local hip-hop artists. The Lower Eastside Community Grant Foundation offered her $10,000 toward matching the Knight grant (which must be matched for the funds to be released). "And we've gotten some anonymous donors," pause, "who are my dad," she said laughing. When Suzuki parents or students go to YouTube to find examples of the songs they need to practice, they'll see Detroit's young African-American violinists playing to hip-hop beats, something they're not likely to see in the American Suzuki Journal. "We want to put it out there that Detroit kids are playing Suzuki violin," Hardie said. There's still a little time to help fund the record project. Detroit Youth Volume's Kickstarter campaign is open for donations until Dec. 31. The Hardie Method When Clara Hardie attended the University of Michigan, "I was a young activist who felt I had to save the world every single day so I didn't have time to play the violin and felt it was selfish if I did," she said. "I spent my time kicking Coca Cola off campus" for its anti-union practices in Columbia and India. In 2010 while Hardie was the program assistant at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen's Rosa Parks Children and Youth Program, she began taking teacher training at the Suzuki Music Institute in Madison Heights. But she wondered how the Suzuki method she'd grown up on and believed in could ever be accessible to the low income kids she worked with. Their parents wouldn't be able to afford to rent their children a violin to learn on. It seemed to her the trainer was always coming up with more things for the parents to buy to support their child's learning. "And I just kept raising my hand and saying what happens if they can't buy it? Can I still be a Suzuki teacher if this is the community I want to work with?" Hardie said. "And I think I really made him think." Now Hardie says Detroit Youth Volume is her activisim. "I didn't major in violin," Hardie said. "Maybe it's not a secret, but I don't care about violin as much as I care about kids. "I see the Suzuki method as my activism now. I just see it from a social justice point of view," she said. "It doesn't even matter that it's the violin," Hardie said. "It's just an activity where you're bonding with an adult that cares about you and thinks you're important and who also respects your parent." Hopes for expansion Hardie is grateful for the three basement classrooms that St. Charles Boromeo Church has opened to them this year. "In the past few years we've taught out of an elevator vestibule and a hallway bcause we had one classroom for multiple classes." There are four teachers, including Hardie. There's a real need to expand the program. Hardie gets requests from parents to enroll their children but she has to turn them away because she doesn't have funding to hire more teachers. Currently the waiting list to join Detroit Youth Volume is 20 deep. "If we had 17 teachers – and maybe they are teaching cello and viola as well as violin – we could teach 150 students and be making an impact on even more kids’ lives," she said. Donations get them classroom space, instruments and the tee shirts kids wear for performances. Grants help with instrument maintenance and gas cards for parents to get their kids to classes. The Detroit Food Justice Task Force helps them pay for healthy after-school snacks. But there is no grant aimed at general operating expenses like paying teachers, and this is where Hardie really needs help. To lend a hand, go to detroityouthvolume.org for information on donating by check or an automatic digital monthly payment of support. Hardie says a monthly donation of $5 or $10 a month would "really make a difference for us." |
RSS Feed