When eighth grader Gregorio Ordaz started playing the trumpet three years ago, he could feel the past perched atop his shoulders, like a little bright and bird-boned creature. He’d lift the instrument, and soon be channeling Willie Colón, whose music had filled the whole house during his childhood. He’d riff, and Eddie Santiago and Papo Lucca would be right there, cheering him on. He’d switch over to the piano, and think about Porfi Baloa, whose story of building community through music didn’t feel so different from his own.
This month, Gregorio joined four classmates from John C. Daniels School of International Communication at the Connecticut Music Educators Association’s (CMEA) Southern Region Middle School Festival, held on a recent Saturday at Haddam Killingworth Middle School. In performances that ranged from jazz to concert band with students from across the state, he and others were able to expand their musical worlds, with connections that may last well beyond this year.
In the process, it has provided a small window into the role that music education plays in these students’ young lives, during a budget season where arts educators may have to fight for their jobs for a second year in a row. All four are pupils of Bryan Carrera, a New Haven Public Schools graduate who went on to the University of Connecticut, then returned to the district that raised him.
“It’s exhilarating,” said Carrera, a tuba player who started at John C. Daniels three years ago, fresh out of college, and also plays with the East Rock Brass Band. “It’s exciting to show off the time I invest with these students, and the time they put in. It just feels surreal. Sometimes when I see them playing their instruments, it just brings me joy. It feels so rewarding.”
It’s been a months-long musical journey, he added. Each week, Carrera gets between 90 and 130 minutes with his band students, a number that is significantly lower than the national, three-hour standard set by the National Association for Music Education. Outside of that time, he programs individual lessons, works with students in multiple languages, and coordinates visits from graduate students at the Yale School of Music, courtesy of the Music In The Schools initiative. When asked if he even counts his hours anymore, he just smiled and shook off the question.
So when CMEA announced auditions this year, Carrera encouraged a handful of students to audition, then walked with them through every step of the process. He was thrilled when five students from John C. Daniels got into the program (one of them, Olivia Kristina Leigh, competed in the elementary division in late February), which helps them hone their skills and receive outside, constructive feedback while meeting kids from across the region. To his memory, it’s the first time that New Haven's schools have sent that number of students to any CMEA event.
Students, meanwhile, worked to fold extra rehearsal time into schedules already full with siblings, homework, school and all-city ensembles, which are also part of Music in the Schools. While Gregorio played in CMEA’s jazz band, the other three middle school students—Naiden Alfredo Cervantes, Kenzie Harsono and Noreishka Rivera—played in the concert band. For all four of them, it became a form of social and emotional learning and stress relief, even when it meant extra work.
“It’s freeing,” Gregorio said on a recent Thursday, his classmates chatting with Carrera across the room during their lunch period. In front of them, two yearbooks sat open, students’ younger selves staring back in rows of smiling photos. “The type of emotion that you get when you play, you feel free. Even when you have sheet music in front of you. Everything feels warmer.”
For him, it’s part of a lifelong dream of becoming a professional musician, like the salsa greats he looks up to. Growing up, Gregorio always had music playing in his household, with a particular affinity for salsa and a love for artists from his family’s native Venezuela. Through his dad, he fell in love with at least a dozen musicians across several decades, from Eddie Santiago and Frankie Ruiz to Oscar D'León and El Grupo Niche.
By the time he picked up the trumpet three years ago—he liked the sax, but he wanted something louder and brassier, he said with a smile— those were his idols.
It was Carrera, whose small, instrument-cluttered office is tucked behind the school’s stage, who introduced him to jazz and jazz theory in the sixth grade. Something about the form—maybe its diasporic roots, or the heartbeat-like, insistent drum weaving through it, or the chance to improvise—hooked him instantly. So when he had a chance to join CMEA’s jazz ensemble, he was excited to do so.
At CMEA, “I got to discover new things,” he said. In the fall, he’s hoping to pursue music as a freshman at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, and this felt like good practice. “I think it’s important because right now, there’s people who don’t know what they want, but then when they discover music, they want to be someone in life. It can be a hobby or a career … It brings new experiences. You feel proud of yourself.”
Across the auditorium, that pride radiated to other students, who took turns jogging up to the stage, seated among empty music stands and a set for an upcoming school performance of Newsies, Jr., for interviews. Naiden Alfredo Cervantes, a trumpet player in the seventh grade, said that he was thrilled to take on four new pieces for the festival, from Brian Balmages’ serene “Rippling Watercolors” to Carol Brittin Chambers’ “Byzantine Dances.”
Like Gregorio’s love for salsa, it wasn’t initially concert music that called to him, but Mariachi, a nod to his dad’s Mexican heritage that always delighted him. From the first time he heard it as a kid, there was something about “that pump of energy” that stayed with him, particularly when he thought about playing music himself. “It’s a different art form,” and that made it all the more refreshing. When it was time to pick an instrument, the trumpet just felt like a natural choice.
Other than an older cousin, no one else in his family is particularly musical, Naiden said—so it also felt a little like uncharted territory. With Carrera’s encouragement, he soared, honing his skills both in school, and in programs like Music In the Schools and the Morse Summer Music Academy. This spring, even when it meant he would be juggling some 30 pieces between different music programs, the CMEA festival seemed like a natural next step.
“It depends on the piece, but when I play my trumpet, I feel happy,” he said, adding that Randall Standridge’s “Blue Sky Horizon,” which he discovered during rehearsals for CMEA’s festival, is a recent favorite. “I like to know that there are teachers around me that can help, so that I can improve.”
“It’s cool,” he added of the festival after a beat. “I feel really proud of myself.”
Top: Noreishka Rivera. Bottom: Kenzie Harsono.
Kenzie Harsono and Noreishka Rivera, both of whom are in the eighth grade, pointed to something even more profound. For Kenzie, who plays the flute, rehearsing is never just about the music (although she likes that part, too): it’s a crash course in building self-confidence, and learning about stress relief. Since she started playing the flute three years ago, she’s learned how to control her breathing, a skill that transfers to managing anxiety.
“It’s a good way to express your emotions and be proud of yourself,” she said.
“Music has always felt like something I can express myself with,” chimed in Noreishka, who plays the clarinet, and agreed that the act of playing feels unique to the discipline. “The sound [of the clarinet] when you come into the room alone, the echo that it gives is like, very calming.”
It’s also a stress reliever, she added. As a young kid, Noreishka grew up playing the piano in Canóvanas, Puerto Rico, surrounded by members of her family. Then when she was seven, she moved with her folks to the mainland for the first time, suddenly separated from the music, the culture and the language that she knew. She began learning English and navigating New Haven’s public school system.
When she joined the band at John C. Daniels, it felt like a safe place. That’s especially true with Carrera, she said (he arrived during her sixth grade year). When she’s having trouble understanding something in a piece of music, he’ll often switch into Spanish to make sure she’s on the same page as her classmates.
“It was amazing when Mr. Carrera came, he really gave me strength,” she said. That’s still true today: Noreishka is now weighing a big decision about high school, and turns to her music as a way to cope. Like her peers, she soaked in the festival as a chance to both be proud of herself, and learn outside of school, with teachers she would likely otherwise never meet.
“It was really fun! ” she said. “I learned more than I knew [going into it]. The sensation, the feeling it [playing] gives me … it gives me a feeling of home. I feel like you can have a lot of things in your head, and [when you play] they just go away. It’s like, ‘I don’t need to worry about that right now.’”