heart strings
It’s about more than hitting the right note
Words by Linda Kramer Jenning
(Photo: Deborah Hobden)
“Music brings me joy.” That’s how 12-year-old Anya Dunston describes what playing the cello means to her. It’s a feeling echoed by her fellow young musicians at the Kids in Concert after-school program, and it’s reflected on their faces when during rehearsal they give a rousing rendition of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”
It’s not just the music, however, that keeps about 80 children, ages 6 to 18, committed to the vigorous training offered by Kids in Concert, known as KIC. It also offers them a safe place to build the emotional and life skills that children need to thrive.
“At KIC they are loved and cared for by their peers and adults,” says Laura Milleson, founder and artistic director of Kids In Concert. “They are learning a great skill and doing something that is hard and beautiful on their instrument and also learning to build confidence.”
Christine Edwards, KIC executive director, explains that unlike a traditional orchestra or conservatory program, KIC also focuses on social and emotional development and leadership. “The music is the tool. It’s what we use to deliver those valuable youth development skills,” she says.
Olive Leiss, 16, agrees. A cellist, Leiss started at KIC in sixth grade and is now finishing her junior year at Kingston High School. “You grow and the program grows with you. It’s more than music skills,” says Leiss, who helps teach and mentor the younger students while continuing her own studies. “I love being able to create art and have skills I value for the rest of my life.”
Kids in Concert, launched in 2010, is modeled after El Sistema, the highly lauded youth orchestra movement from Venezuela. North Kitsap and Bainbridge public schools offer no string programs. KIC provides free lessons and instruments to children whose only other option would be private lessons. Over the past decade, some 800 students have participated in KIC’s after-school and summer programs.
“Our vision is that anybody who wants to be here is able to do so with no financial barrier, no instrument barrier, no fees,” says Edwards. “We possess over 70 instruments. We allow the students to direct their own desire and decide what they want to play. They see somebody play an instrument and have the opportunity to see it and feel it. It’s like a petting zoo.”
Before KIC began acquiring instruments, early participants “played” on paper violins with strings made of yarn. KIC shifted as it grew, moving from Bainbridge to an after-school program based in a church close to Suquamish Elementary before moving to its present site at West Sound Academy. Over half its students identify as people of color.
The program nurtures a strong relationship with the Suquamish tribe. Max Dawes, a member of the tribe who graduated KIC and went on to Cornish College of the Arts, composed a piece based on the tribal creation story. Led by Dawes at the podium, KIC’s young musicians performed the piece during a special concert at Benaroya Hall in April.
“KIC has been transformative in our family’s life,” says Robin Sigo, Max’s mom and a former member of the Suquamish Tribal Council. “My older kids are now college graduates, and they still come back to play in the concerts and mentor others. What a perfect example of regenerative values.”
In addition to offering strings and percussion training, KIC added a choir program and dreams of one day incorporating more instruments to have a full orchestra. Students meet in classes and ensembles or individual sessions depending on their level. They also participate in Healthy and Whole, a social and emotional learning program.
“We are trying to address the whole person to be successful in life,” says Edwards. “Do we expect them to walk out as Yo-Yo Ma? No. But our real desire is for our kids to want to contribute to their community and get out in the world and be successful in whatever they do.”
KIC takes older students on college tours, and all its participants have gone on to four-year and community colleges. The musical selections at KIC cover classical basics like Bach while also including numbers from Hamilton and pop tunes its young musicians like. Student tastes also shape KIC’s summer musical theater camp where the older KIC students take charge to write scripts and create original choreography, designs and costumes.
We see children who at first sit in the corner and don’t want to interact and then by the performance it’s as if you are looking at a different child delivering their part and embracing their role. It’s mind-boggling,” says Edwards. “I can see a light in them when they perform. This is their moment, and it is huge to be presenting their work in front of their families and community.”
Adds Milleson: “Music creates possibilities over and over again. We’re helping our students see what they are capable of and helping to show them what a beautiful caring space and community looks like.”
Their enthusiastic students clearly agree. “KIC has made a difference in everything I do,” says Hazel Milleson, 17, a violinist finishing her senior year at Kingston High School. She started at KIC when he was six years old. “This is a place where I found consistent, supportive adults. It made me who I am. Music brings me peace, and I know it’s something I’m good at, that I have a talent.”
a young composer tells his tribe’s story
When Max Dawes started studying music at Kids in Concert, he had no idea that at age 21 he would stand on the Benaroya Hall stage conducting children from the same program in his original composition “Creation.”
He composed the piece after talking with a storyteller from the Suquamish Tribe. The finished piece uses strings and drums to help immerse listeners in that story.
“The story itself is, at its base, about humankind and our place in the world, and how people can live in harmony with the earth,” says Dawes, who graduated from Cornish this year. “I think that comes across in the music. That was my primary goal with the music, and I think I achieved that.
“It is very personal,” he adds. “But at the same time, it connects to this larger thing of where my people are from, and how these stories came about. I’d say it’s both personal and very widespread.”
The Benaroya performance grew from a partnership the Seattle Symphony launched in 2022 with three music education organizations: Kids in Concert, Key to Change and Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra. Through the partnership, KIC students and families have attended regular performances of the Seattle Symphony and have had opportunities to interact with Symphony members like cellist Nathan Chan.
Dawes’ older sisters had also participated in Kids in Concert, and he started going after school when he was 15. “I joined to play viola, and I moved relatively quickly into composition, which was something they actually developed for me and around me,” he said. “So many things have been facilitated by the program, like this concert, that I would have never had just on my own. Being able to hear my pieces played by string orchestra, that’s been incredible.”
Max Dawes conducting at Benaroya Hall. (Photo: Carlin Ma)