Being the change: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Published in the American Teachers Magazine, Spring 2022.
Penny Lazarus Piano Studio
Newburyport, Massachusetts
With Leah Claiborne. “How a local music teacher powerfully changes her community with music being the driving center of her mission.”
My piano studio does not look like America. Missing are the beautiful arrays of the darkest part of the rainbow spectrum that is a symbol of diversity. During online recitals, when we applaud, Zoom gives us six choices for reaction skin tones. My Korean, Hispanic, Sephardic, Egyptian, Lebanese, Guatemalan and Trinidadian students match four of these. Still, at least two colors are missing. Yet we work to broaden the canon with Afro-centric composers. We include the myriad castles of our skin,1 highlighting achievements of Black artists throughout the studio.
Outside we have a Little Free Music Library that identifies my studio. It is filled with traditional music as well as Florence Price’s Album of Piano Pieces and Nathan Holder’s Why is My Piano Black and White. In the hallway are books about Beethoven, and Change Sings by poet Amanda Gorman, who delivered her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the 2021 presidential inauguration. Music by Hale Smith, Margaret Bonds, William Grant Still, Valerie Capers, Joseph Bologne, Zenobia Powell Perry, Jeremy Ajani Jordan and Regina Harris Baiocchi share space with favorites by classicist composers.
We are a project-based studio. This means, I work with an organizing idea that forms repertoire, recital themes and community engagement events all year long. This year, students are studying music by Black composers and will perform these pieces at a showcase recital. I also weave these themes throughout our general music study. In one event, we practiced conducting. So, when students conducted videos of symphonies, my guest conductor and I included Black maestros. In another event, we toured the church where 19th-century anti-slavery activist William Lloyd Garrison preached and eventually, evicted.
My zoomer students look forward to our annual practice project in which students find a sponsor who gives them three cents for every minute at the piano during a 6-week period. We raise $1,000 annually to support a “sister” studio. This year we are working with the Hamilton-Garrett Music and Arts after-school program in Roxbury, Massachusetts, so that our donation will support their mission to “pass on the rich legacy of Black cultural music to the next generation.”
Notes
1. Castle of Our Skins is a concert and educational series in Boston, Massachusetts, dedicated to creating more equity in composer representation on concert stages and highlighting achievement by Black historical figures. The phrase “castle of our skins” comes from the celebrated poet Nikki Giovanni’s Poem (for Nina).