Top: Yesmin Kuwa and sisters Perry and Debbie Mohamed. Bottom: Students from the Music Bridge class play together.
Yesmin Kuwa stepped out in front of her peers and lifted a bow upright, nodding for her classmates to join in. In her left hand she raised her violin in the air, checked the shoulder pad, and brought it down gently on top of her head. A wave of giggles rose from the audience. She adjusted it on her shoulder, and scurried back into the group. The first notes of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” rang out across Erector Square.
The sound comes from students in Music Bridge, a growing initiative at Music Haven for young immigrants and refugees. On a recent Wednesday evening, the students appeared as part of a winter violin recital, playing for an intimate audience of parents and siblings at Music Haven’s 315 Peck St. headquarters. This winter marks the organization’s fifth anniversary in the space.
“We have kids from so many different cultures, so many different countries,” said Yaira Matyakubova, a resident violinist and educator at the organization who is also the artistic director of the Haven String Quartet. “At Music Haven, we are all definitely a musical family, an international family. We all come [to music] from different paths.”
Born in 2017 as a collaboration with Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS), the program works with young immigrants and refugees who are also living in a new home, going to a new school, and learning a new language. At Music Haven, it is the mellifluous brainchild of Matyakubova, who came to the U.S. from Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, at 16.
As dusk fell outside, over a dozen young violinists got ready to show off their skills, and cheer on peers who have been studying the violin for between four months and seven years. As Music Bridge students watched eagerly, student Maryam Taheri rested her violin gently on her shoulder, smoothing the pages of her Suzuki practice book as she took a deep breath in. In her outfit, a deep purple dress embroidered with white thread and lace, was a reminder of her native Afghanistan.
As piano came in beneath her, she began to play “Allegro” with short, succinct bursts of sound that hung in the air. She eased into it, the strings bouncing in time with the keyboard. She slowed down, guiding her bow across the instrument, and the sound plunged toward the floorboards before soaring back to the ceiling. When she finished, smiling behind a lime green mask, the audience exploded in applause. She gave a tiny bow before heading quickly back to her seat.
Maryam Taheri.
In the audience, students kept their eyes on fellow musicians, some of whom began in Music Bridge, and have stayed with the organization. When Mohammad Tahiri hesitated on the first few notes of “Etude,” also from Suzuki Book One, Matyakubova slowed down on the keys, then lifted her arms as if she was winding back the clock. She pulled one hand through the air, tracing a sort of musical road map. Behind them, two wire sculptures of musicians peeked out, frozen in time.
Above a crisp black mask, Matyakubova’s eyes found Mohammad’s and rested on them for a moment. Then she nodded, and started again. This time, he was unflappable. A scale climbed upwards, and then chased itself in a circle, repeating as the keys sang along with it. On a second go, the violin warbled and sang, finding its voice in the moment.
That sense of constant, steady guidance was still there when Matyakubova announced the Music Bridge class, and they stood with a rustle of bows and tiny feet, making their way to the front of the room. As they got in position, Matyakubova said that students may all come from different countries, but have found common ground in music—and were excited to share their craft with the audience. Currently, she teaches eight Music Bridge students who together hail from Afghanistan, Egypt, and Sudan.
Top: Eliana Ortiz. Bottom: Mohammad Tahiri.
As she slipped behind the piano, students looked around at each other, then back to the front of the room. Yesmin, whose family is Sudanese, guided her classmates from rest position to playing, pausing as the group checked their bridges, strings, shoulderpads.
As half a dozen cell phone cameras emerged to record the moment, they played a steady, rhythmic “Twinkle Twinkle,” so calm in the space that a viewer could close their eyes and see stars spreading over the blue expanse of night. A single melody split into two, layered as students pressed on. When they finished, the room burst into applause.
Around them, a steady flow of music seemed to push the world upright, if only for an hour. A new parent class left the audience on the edge of a standing ovation. Sisters Adina and Ayana Salahuddin, who had come to both play and support their younger sister Camissa, brought the holiday spirit into the space with “Carol of the Bells,” their violins singing to each other. Eliana Ortiz, who began playing just three months ago, let “Song Of The Wind” dance through the space, the notes bobbing along the floorboards as they landed softly.
Nowhere, perhaps, was that clearer than the end of the evening, when all students came back on stage to play “Canon In D.” The song is tradition: it has flowed through multiple holiday concerts, leadership transitions, and now a global pandemic. As they gathered to play, there was every sound a violin can make: tinny, silky, deep and jingling. Adina and Ayana Salahuddin spun every so often, in a wordless way of telling performers to keep time with each other. Then just as quickly, the music of conversation filled the space.
“It Gives Me Joy”
Top: Ayana Salahuddin and Matyakubova. Bottom: Matyakubova with Music Bridge students.
Following the recital Wednesday, several current Music Bridge students described the class as a way to build friendships, boost self-confidence, and navigate growing up in New Haven while also learning to play and practice an instrument.
“Sometimes when I play music, it makes me feel like I'm an actual famous musician, and then like, it gives me joy because I like the sound of the violin and I've always wanted to play music,” said Maysa Yamrali, who was born in Afghanistan in 2013, and came to the U.S. in 2018 when she was five. “It feels very, like, exciting and enjoying … It gives me more self-confidence.”
In Music Bridge she has been able to build new friendships outside of school, which she attends in West Haven. Wednesday, she chatted excitedly with Yesmin and sisters Perry and Debbie Mohamed, as the four compared notes on violin practice and elementary school homework.
“Playing the violin makes me feel good,” chimed in Yesmin. “When you start it, it just feels nice, but then you start liking it more because it, like, it sounds really nice.”
As sisters, Perry and Debbie said they have helped each other improve as part of living together. Often, Perry said, she’ll remind Debbie to rosin her bow. In return, Debbie reminds her to tune her violin before playing. Together, they have found a way to communicate that isn’t verbal at all, but lives alongside their everyday chatter in Arabic and English.
“When I'm upset and I have violin lessons, or I just practice, it gives me a lot of confidence to tell myself, 'Oh, I'm ready to be happy,'” Perry said. “So it gives me a lot of confidence to just calm down."
For Matyakubova, the class is part of her broader mission to give back through the arts, and specifically music education. During her time at Music Haven, she has often told the story of arriving in the U.S. with only her violin and a backpack of clothes. People showed her small and large kindnesses alike, from Upper Michigan to Florida to Texas to New Haven.
She now holds onto that in her own work, from her teaching and programming for the Haven String Quartet to a benefit concert for Ukraine that Music Haven held earlier this year.
This year, students’ progress is also part of a larger blossoming at the organization, which continues to expand in Erector Square and New Haven.
At a concert earlier this fall, for instance, quartet members paired Joel Thompson’s “In Response To The Madness” with Benjamin Britten’s Quartet No. 2 in C Major. In between, they fit Simon’s “Elegy: A Cry From the Grave,” first released in 2018 as a requiem to victims of both police brutality and the system out of which it has grown.
The first, which runs just over six minutes, was written in 2019 in response to a constant, exhausting and trauma-driven news cycle. The last comes from the aftermath of World War II, after Britten toured Europe, surveilling the vast damage and loss of human life that the war had left. In the piece, there is a tension between frenetic, agitated strings and a tranquility that he opens with, then spends whole movements trying to get back to. As musicians lifted their bows and began to play, it was enough to bring a listener to their knees.
Camissa Salahuddin, who studies with Patrick Doane.
In an interview after that concert, Matyakubova said that it was important to members of the quartet to address the current moment—and provide a potential antidote through the music. In her day to day work, she brings that same approach to working with her students.
“We as musicians, we feel the obligation to be reflecting our times and also see how history repeats itself,” she said. “It's so important to us to spread the message of kindness toward one another, to really believe in one another. We have to not only look for it, but also train our minds and our hearts. It's very important to hold on to what we build, and it's so easy to break it … it's very important for us to cherish, to value one another.”
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