With new piano lab, East Boston students straddle two worlds
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Virginia Lopez Alvarez, a music teacher at Mario Umana Academy, reviews scales with her third-grade class. Photo: Steph Solis/Axios
An East Boston school has drawn students to Beethoven, Vivaldi — and the likes of Mexican superstar Juan Gabriel.
- A new piano lab aims to give a boost to the majority-Latino school's bicultural music program.
The big picture: Mario Umana Academy is the 10th school enrolled in the Lang Lang Music Foundation's Keys of Inspiration program, which works with Title 1 elementary schools serving students in underserved communities.
Playing the news: The K-8 school received new electric pianos earlier in April for its program, which has 245 students across grades 2-5 enrolled.
- The program has also worked with Dever Elementary in Dorchester, the Hennigan School in Jamaica Plain and Chittick Elementary in Hyde Park.
Zoom in: On a recent Wednesday morning, Virginia Lopez Alvarez directed her third-grade class to practice "Mary Had a Little Lamb" on the pianos.
- The students once shared seven old keyboards with notes painted on the worn keys.
- Now each student sat at an upright piano, pressing each key with an index finger, trying to match the sounds of their classmates.
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What they're saying: "Seeing how they build a community in this classroom is amazing," Lopez, a classically trained harpist from Colombia, told Axios.
- One day, Lopez said, those students will follow in the footsteps of their older peers, playing classical European music alongside Latino classics like the beloved Christmas song, "El Burrito Sabanero."
- Last year, older students performed a cumbia by the late Ecuadorian artist Julio Jaramillo.
The bottom line: Music class might look different at Mario Umana compared to other Boston-area schools, with students learning to appreciate music across genres, time periods and cultures.